MODES  AND   MORALS 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


BY 
KATHARINE  FULLERTON  GEROULD 


NEW  YORK 

CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 
1920 


Copyright,  1920,  by 
Charles  Scribner's  Sons 


Published  February,  1920 


COPYRIGHT,  1918,  BY  HARPER  &  BROTHERS 
COPYRIGHT,  1914,  BY  HENRY  HOLT  &  COMPANY 

COPYRIGHT,  1911, 1912,  1913,  1914,  1915, 1918,  1919,  BY  THE  ATLANTIC  MONTHLY 
COMPANY 


THE  6CRIBNER    PRESS 


p 


sA  A-/  /V 
CONTENTS 


PACE 

Simplicity  3 

Dress  and  the  Woman  37 

Caviare  on  Principle  58 

TA^  Extirpation  of  Culture  66 

Fashions  in  Men  94 

The  Newest  Woman  118 

Temperament  134 

Boundaries  of  Truth  164 

UJ  Alcotfs  New  England  182 

Sensual  Ear  199 

British  Novelists,  Ltd.  218 
Remarkable  Rightness  of  Rudyard  Kipling      254 


MODES  AND   MORALS 


THE  NEW  SIMPLICITY 

MY  first  caption  was  Democracy,  Plumb 
ing,  and  the  War.  That  will  hardly 
do  as  a  title,  for  it  does  not  hint  the 
heart  of  the  matter;  though  the  war  has  pre 
cipitated  conditions  which  our  special  form  of 
democracy  has  long  been  preparing  us  for,  and 
plumbing  is  perhaps  as  symbolic  as  it  is  ubiquit 
ous  in  the  American  domestic  scene.  All  three, 
with  all  their  implications,  are  factors,  certainly, 
in  our  present  problem  of  living,  and  if  war 
has  brought  that  problem  to  acuteness,  democ 
racy  and  plumbing  (and  what  they  may  be 
taken  to  stand  for)  have  made  us  ripe  for  up 
heaval.  Edison  and  his  like  are  as  responsible, 
in  their  way,  as  Thomas  Jefferson  or  William 
Haywood.  All  three  have,  without  doubt,  con 
tributed  to  the  present  and  future  dilemma  of 
educated  people  in  moderate  circumstances. 
War  has,  of  necessity,  turned  moderate  circum 
stances  to  actual  poverty;  but  democracy  and 
plumbing  were  already  preparing  the  debacle 
for  this  group.  All  of  us — the  educated  classes 
as  well  as  the  uneducated — are  guilty  together, 
that  is,  of  pampering  ourselves  with  physical 
comforts;  and  democracy  always  makes  for 
materialism,  because  the  only  kind  of  equality 

[3] 


AND  MORALS 


that  you  can  guarantee  to  a  whole  people 
is,  broadly  speaking,  physical.  Democracy  and 
plumbing,  as  well  as  war,  make  the  problem  of 
our  immediate  future  a  rather  special  one.  We 
do  not  share  all  phases  of  it  with  our  Allies. 
Let  me  explain,  a  little,  what  I  mean. 

If  America  has  led  the  world  in  labor-saving 
devices,  it  is  because  America  is  democratic  on 
a  bigger  scale  than  any  other  country.  The  per 
son  who  profits  by  the  labor-saving  device  is 
the  person  who  does  the  work.  The  fact  that 
France  and  England  have  not  kept  pace  with 
us  in  plumbing  and  tiled  kitchens  and  electrical 
appliances  does  not  mean  —  as  we  have  some 
times  fatuously  taken  it  to  mean  —  that  they  are 
less  civilized  than  we.  It  means  only  that  per 
sonal  service  has  been,  with  them,  cheaper  and 
more  a  matter  of  course.  Where  prosperous 
Americans  multiply  vacuum  cleaners  and  elec 
tric  washing  machines  and  garbage  incinerators, 
prosperous  Europeans  multiply  their  number 
of  servants.  The  Englishman  really  prefers  a 
huge  tin  tub  in  his  bedroom  of  a  morning.  We 
prefer  to  walk  into  the  bathroom  and  turn  on 
the  tap.  That  preference  may  well  have  become 
so  natural  that  we  cannot  explain  it.  But  the 
origin  of  the  American  preference  is  surely 
that  in  America  only  the  very  rich  could  afford 
a  personal  servant  whose  duty  it  was  to  set  up 
the  tub,  fetch  in  huge  cans  of  water,  and  re 
move  all  traces  of  the  bath  as  soon  as  it  was 


THE  NEW  SIMPLICITY 


done  with.  Even  a  few  years  ago,  I  remember 
having  great  difficulty  in  a  London  hotel  of  the 
better  sort  (but  very  English  and  almost  to 
tally  unfrequented  by  Americans)  in  getting 
the  chambermaid  to  procure  me  a  slop-jar.  The 
hotel  was  much  too  British  to  run  to  numbers 
of  private  baths.  Hence  the  crying  need  of  a 
slop-jar.  The  maid  finally  stole  one  for  me 
from  a  room  across  the  corridor,  and  assured 
me  that  the  gentleman  from  whom  she  stole 
would  not  miss  it.  Nothing  would  induce  her 
to  resume,  in  his  behalf,  the  treasure.  I  am 
informed,  by  friends  who  have  more  British 
social  experience  than  I,  that  slop-jars  are  not 
in  the  best  English  tradition — because,  theo 
retically,  in  the  opulent  old-fashioned  house 
hold,  as  soon  as  you  have  washed  your  hands, 
the  water  in  which  you  washed  them,  the  towel 
on  which  you  wiped  them,  mysteriously  and 
gracefully  disappear.  Perfection  of  service  lies 
in  having  plenty  of  dexterous  servants  lying  in 
wait  to  discover  your  needs;  so  many  servants, 
and  such  well-trained  ones,  that  you  cannot 
wash  your  hands  without  their  becoming  aware 
of  it  and,  with  the  least  possible  impinging  on 
your  notice,  removing  the  traces  of  your  ablu 
tions.  Perfection  of  service  does  not  involve 
your  emptying  your  own  wash-basin,  even  into 
a  slop-jar.  Hence,  no  slop-jar. 

Now  there  are  very  few  of  us  who  would 
take  the  trouble  to  invent  a  tiled  bathroom  if 

[si 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


our  tubs  were  automatically  fetched,  filled,  and 
removed  for  us,  all  at  the  proper  instant;  or  if 
a  hot-water  can  miraculously  sprang  into  being 
as  soon  as  the  desire  for  hot  water  seized  us. 
There  is  no  labor-saving  device  so  perfectly 
convenient  as  ringing  a  bell  and  having  some 
one  else  do  the  thing  for  you  with  complete 
competence.  It  is  by  no  means  strange  that 
well-to-do  Europeans  have  been  content  to  be 
supremely  waited  upon,  instead  of  making 
practical  tasks  mechanically  easier  for  them 
selves.  The  goddess  of  the  labor-saving  inven 
tion  is  the  woman  who  does  all,  or  a  good 
share,  of  "her  own  work."  Old-fashioned 
English  and  French  houses  are  cold;  but 
(climate  apart)  nothing  like  so  cold  as  Ameri 
can  houses  would  be  if  Americans  depended  on 
open  fires.  For  in  England  or  France  there  are 
ten  people  to  make  the  fires,  to  one  in  America. 
We  simply  dare  not — again,  climate  apart — 
depend,  as  our  British  cousins  have  been  wont 
to,  on  open  fires.  The  average  household  can 
not  afford  the  servants  to  do  incessant  fire- 
making  all  over  the  house. 

So  we  have  multiplied  devices,  from  the 
modest  kitchen  cabinet  up;  because  that  ma 
jority  which  advertisers  and  inventors  are 
always  trying  to  reach  does  a  lot  of  things  for 
itself.  Even  those  Americans  who  always  have 
had,  and  perhaps  still  will  have,  plenty  of  ser 
vants,  have  indulged  in  these  devices.  For 

[6] 


THE  NEW  SIMPLICITY 


pure  philanthropy's  sake?  Well,  I  am  afraid 
not  quite.  Rather,  because  the  standard  hav 
ing  been  set  by  the  mistress  who  is  also  the 
servant,  the  standard  must  be  lived  up  to,  or 
professional  servants  would  complain.  The 
interesting  point  is  that  in  America  the  stand 
ard  is  set  by  the  woman  who  does  her  own 
work  or  a  part  of  it,  or  who  may,  at  any  given 
moment,  have  to  occupy  herself  thus.  We  are, 
you  see,  a  democracy  beyond  the  democracies 
of  other  lands.  For  it  is  not  simply  a  question 
of  money;  it  is  a  question  of  our  all  being  in 
the  same  boat. 

I  am  not  going  into  the  servant  question, 
for  that  is  a  question  as  trite  as  it  is  tragic. 
But,  as  we  all  know,  even  before  the  war  it  was 
growing  acute.  The  best  servants  we  had  in  the 
old  days  came  from  the  countries  where  per 
sonal  service  was  a  tradition — chiefly  from  the 
territories  of  Great  Britain.  But  northern 
Europe  is  ceasing  to  enter  domestic  service; 
rather,  it  seeks  to  employ.  One  has  only  to  read 
the  pathetic  testimony  in  the  daily  press,  in  the 
"women's  magazines,"  even  sometimes  in  phil 
anthropic  periodicals.  What  they  all  say  is  that 
the  only  way  you  can  keep  your  cook  in  your 
kitchen  is  to  treat  her  as  if  she  were  the  gover 
ness,  or  to  give  her  factory  hours  and  factory 
freedom — to  put  her  on  a  level,  that  is,  with 
the  more  independent  worker.  At  that,  they  do 
not  give  us  much  hope  of  keeping  her.  But  I 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


fancy  that,  before  we  turn  the  whole  house 
over  to  the  cook,  we  shall  dispense  with  her 
and  get  our  meals  from  co-operative  kitchens. 
I  have  noticed  of  late  years  in  the  magazines 
that  deal  with  architectural  and  decorative 
problems  increasing  stress  on  the  absurdity  of 
having  a  dining-room.  Why  absurd?  For  only 
one  reason:  that  here  is  a  room  which  must 
be  cleaned,  which,  therefore,  means  more  ser 
vice.  If  you  have  your  meals  in  the  "living- 
room,"  you  dispense  with  so  much  floor-and- 
wall  space  to  be  gone  over.  In  only  that  sense 
is  it  absurd.  For  most  of  us  will  agree  that 
while  English  lodgings  are  all  very  well,  espe 
cially  for  a  solitary  creature,  it  is  a  painful 
business  for  a  large  family  to  eat  three  meals 
a  day  in  a  room  which  has  to  be  lived  in  other 
wise.  All  people  may  not  have  the  prejudice 
known  to  some  of  us  against  social  consump 
tion  of  food;  but  any  one  will  agree  that  the 
best  dinner  in  the  world  leaves  a  smell  behind 
it.  A  dining-room  may  be  a  luxury,  but  it  is 
not  an  absurdity,  so  long  as  you  can  by  any 
means  afford  it.  If  the  aesthetic  and  pseudo- 
aesthetic  experts  in  domesticity  are  telling  us 
that  a  dining-room  is  ridiculous,  it  is  only  be 
cause  they  wish  to  prepare  us  for  an  inevitable 
contraction  of  our  comfort,  an  unavoidable 
mitigation  of  decency.  The  one  most  aristo 
cratic  element  in  life,  physically  speaking,  is 
spaciousness;  it  has  always  been  in  the  best 

[8] 


THE  NEW  SIMPLICITY 


tradition  to  be  frugal  to  starvation  in  a  corner 
of  a  palace.  But  we  have  come  nowadays  to 
care  more  for  what  we  eat  (I  fear)  than  for 
how  or  where  we  eat  it.  The  abolition  of  the 
dining-room  is  only  a  further  step  on  the  road 
we  entered  when  we  moved  en  masse  out  of 
houses  into  flats.  It  has  been  hard  to  get  ser 
vice;  and  meanwhile  we  have  grown  soft  and 
would  rather  do  without  those  amenities  which 
are  not  conveniences  than  to  furnish  them  for 
ourselves. 

It  must  in  fairness  be  admitted  that  two 
things  have  combined  to  bring  us  to  this  pass. 
The  most  obvious  fact  is  this  of  the  labor  situa 
tion,  which  is  now  immensely  accentuated  by 
the  war.  But  another  force  has  always  been  at 
work.  Except  in  that  part  of  the  country  which 
imported  slaves  early  and  kept  them  as  long  as 
it  could,  more  or  less  pioneer  standards  pre 
vailed.  We  were  a  new  country;  we  dispensed 
perforce  (as  in  other  colonies)  with  many  of 
the  inherited  comforts.  Our  love  of  personal 
(I  do  not  mean  political)  independence  was  a 
kind  of  protective  coloring.  The  enforced  sim 
plicity  of  the  pioneer  scene  bred  in  us  a  distaste 
for  being  waited  on  too  importunately.  Because 
we  had  to  do  certain  things  for  ourselves,  we 
developed  a  preference  for  doing  them,  a  dis 
taste  for  the  constant  interposition  of  another 
human  being  among  the  more  private  processes 
of  existence.  Even  in  the  South,  some  modifica- 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


tion  of  the  tradition  must  have  been  necessary, 
for  the  South  must  always  have  been  badly, 
though  exuberantly,  served.  Here  and  there  a 
butler,  a  lady's  maid,  may,  after  years  of 
struggle,  have  been  highly  trained;  and  the 
colored  race  has  a  gift  for  cooking.  But  in 
many  ways  Southerners  must  have  contended 
with  the  disheartening  conditions  faced  by  all 
English  households  in  the  outposts  of  empire, 
dependent  on  another  and  a  stupid  race  for  the 
satisfaction  of  their  needs.  Southern  luxury  lay 
in  having  a  score  of  inadequate  menials  to  keep 
the  masters  as  comfortable  as  three  or  four 
really  good  servants  would  have  done.  It  was 
slave  labor,  and  slave  labor  reaches  compe 
tence  only  by  sheer  force  of  numbers.  There 
was  never  an  ideal  of  domestic  service  there, 
because  there  was  never  the  rounded  conception 
of  civilized  domestic  comfort  in  any  slave's 
mind.  And  nothing  is  more  slovenly  or  incom 
petent  in  domestic  service  than  the  younger 
generation  of  free-born  negroes.  I  do  not  think 
the  colored  race  is  going  to  prove  our  domestic 
salvation. 

We  welcomed  the  labor-saving  device,  in  the 
first  place,  for  the  reasons  I  have  given.  By 
the  labor-saving  device  we  have  been  brought 
insensibly  to  an  almost  animal  dependence  on 
creature  comforts.  With  all  our  theoretical 
glorification  of  simplicity,  we  have  really  prided 
ourselves  supremely  on  our  physical  luxuries, 

[10] 


THE  NEW  SIMPLICITY 


and  most  of  all,  it  must  be  said,  on  those 
physical  luxuries  which  have  no  aesthetic  value. 
Our  plumbing  has  been  our  civilization.  The 
European  aristocracy  is  for  the  most  part  not 
so  "comfortable"  as  the  American  middle 
class;  and  therefore  we  have  considered  our 
selves  the  greatest  nation  in  the  world.  We 
have  been  snobbish  about  many  things,  but 
about  nothing  so  much  as  our  electrical  appli 
ances  and  our  skyscrapers.  We  have  sinned, 
all  of  us  together,  as  I  said  before;  and  now 
we  are  paying.  Simplicity,  austerity,  even,  are 
forced  upon  us;  and  it  behooves  those  of  us 
who  really  care,  in  spite  of  temporary  aposta 
sies,  about  real  values,  to  take  thought  and  to 
plan.  The  vital  question  is  not  whether  we  shall 
simplify,  but  how.  On  that  depends  our  civiliza 
tion. 

Neither  the  new  war  millionaires  nor  skilled 
labor  can  teach  us  that.  We  shall  have  need  of 
all  our  trained  perceptions,  of  all  our  first-hand 
and  all  our  book  knowledge,  of  what  money 
has  been  most  wisely  spent  for  in  the  past,  to 
make  our  choice  intelligently.  The  new  million 
aire  and  the  enriched  laboring  man  will  not, 
for  the  most  part,  be  able  to  help  us;  for,  by 
and  large,  having  no  experience  of  the  finer 
things  of  civilization,  they  will  not  know.  For 
ourselves,  it  does  not  much  matter — for  us 
who  have  seen  a  world  in  ruin  and  can  never 
"care"  for  anything  in  the  same  way  again — 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


but  this  is  perhaps  our  first  duty  to  our  chil 
dren.  They  cannot  have  all  the  things  we  were 
brought  up  to  crave  and  expect;  but  they  must 
have  the  essentials.  What,  in  a  practical  sense, 
are  those  going  to  be? 

The  Pennsylvania  miner,  making  from  forty 
to  seventy-five  dollars  a  day,  buys  an  auto 
mobile — not  necessarily  a  Ford — which  waits 
for  him  at  the  entrance  to  the  mine.  His  wife 
buys  finery.  Both  buy  the  best  food  they  can 
get.  It  has  been  publicly  said,  I  understand,  by 
a  distinguished  representative  of  the  Food 
Administration,  that  almost  every  class  of  the 
community  was  doing  its  duty  in  the  way  of 
food  conservation,  except  skilled  labor.  That  is 
the  class  which  cannot  be  reached  by  appeal. 
The  very  poorest  are  still  very  poor,  and  they 
have  neither  the  money  nor  the  knowledge  to 
enable  them  to  indulge  in  forbidden  gastro 
nomic  luxuries.  The  rich  are  apparently — in 
most  cases — making  it  a  point  of  honor  to  help 
out.  But  skilled  labor,  which  is  so  necessary 
to  the  prosecution  of  war,  which  has  never  in 
its  life  been  so  pampered,  so  flattered,  so  kow 
towed  to,  so  overpaid  (yes,  I  mean  that;  it  is 
overpaid,  and  I  will  explain  what  I  mean  pres 
ently),  has  lost  its  head.  It  probably  believes 
the  things  the  politicians  and  its  own  leaders 
have  been  saying  to  it.  It  will  work,  and  con 
sider  itself  patriotic  for  working — but  it  will 
exact  from  the  rest  of  us,  the  public,  a  price  it 

[12] 


THE  NEW  SIMPLICITY 


has  no  right  to,  and,  lest  the  honor  of  our 
country  and  the  ideals  we  fight  for  be  lost,  we 
shall  pay  it.  It  may  be  that  the  reckoning  will 
come  later;  or  it  may  be  that  we  are  so  sunk  in 
materialism  that  skilled  labor  will  continue  to 
rule  the  earth.  Just  so  long  as  we  feel  our 
greatest  need  to  be  of  the  things  it  furnishes 
us  with,  and  its  greatest  need  is  for  the  things 
we  cannot  furnish  it  with,  our  necks  will  be 
bowed  under  labor's  yoke.  Our  only  chance  of 
emancipation  lies  in  finding  some  of  our  great 
est  goods  in  fields  not  under  labor's  control.  In 
other  words,  to  live  at  all,  in  any  peace,  in  any 
equanimity  and  longanimity,  we  must  be  as 
little  materialistic  in  temper  and  desire  as  pos 
sible.  We  must  teach  our  children  that  the 
greatest  goods  are  not  the  things  that  skilled 
labor  produces.  That  is  not  only  truth;  it  is 
self-preservation.  Labor  will  have  the  motor 
cars  and  the  delicacies  of  the  table,  the  jewels 
and  the  joy-rides;  we  must  see  to  it  that  we 
keep  something  else,  and  learn  to  feel  the  im 
portance  of  our  treasure.  If  we  can  maintain 
a  prestige  value  for  the  things  of  our  choice 
(frankly,  I  doubt  if  we  can)  "the  lords  of  their 
hands"  may  come  to  desire  the  things  we  have 
chosen,  and  help  to  make  them  accessible.  But 
we  must  be  careful  to  make  no  concessions ;  we 
must  not  take  one  step,  ourselves,  in  the  ma 
terialistic  direction. 

This  is  not  snobbishness;  it  is  a  matter  of 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


life  and  death.  No  one  is  going  to  have  leisure, 
any  more,  to  be  a  snob  or  any  such  non- 
essential  thing.  At  least,  if  any  one  has  the 
time,  it  will  not  be  the  educated  classes.  We 
shall  have  to  work  as  we  have  never  worked 
before,  physically  as  well  as  mentally.  We  shall 
have  to  learn  to  co-operate  with  one  another, 
too;  to  make  an  almost  religious  brotherhood. 
For  it  is  our  children  who  matter,  and  we  can 
not  begin  too  soon  to  prepare  them  for  a  world 
which  has  nothing  in  common  with  the  world 
we  knew.  Only  by  joining  in  utmost  effort  with 
the  like-minded  can  we  hope  to  protect  them. 
I  know  there  are  Utopians  who  see  in  the 
socialization  of  Anglo-Saxon  governments  hope, 
along  Marxian  lines,  for  Anglo-Saxondom. 
They  foresee,  I  suppose,  the  kind  of  Paradise 
that  the  Admirable  Crichton  (in  Barrie's  im 
moral  and  delightful  play)  must  have  experi 
enced  on  the  desert  island.  There  is  going  to 
be  only  one  party  in  England,  Mr.  Arthur 
Henderson  has  recently  said — the  Labor  party. 
It  may  be.  Let  us  hope  that  some  of  the  "un 
attached  leaders"  will  at  least  preserve  logic 
if  they  do  not  preserve  majorities.  Mr.  Hen 
derson's  own  argument  is  about  as  convincing 
as  though  one  should  say:  in  certain  abnormal 
conditions  martial  law  is  the  only  regime  that 
will  work;  therefore,  since  civil  law  has  been 
found  inadequate  to  conditions  of  riot  and 
pestilence  and  famine,  we  must  give  it  up 
altogether,  and  make  martial  law  perpetual. 

[14] 


THE  NEW  SIMPLICITY 


The  real  arguments  against  private,  and  for 
public,  ownership  are,  of  course,  quite  other 
than  those  Mr.  Henderson  offers.  The  point  is 
that  Mr.  Henderson  evidently  does  not  know 
bad  logic  when  he  sees  it.  Let  Mr.  Henderson 
and  his  followers  keep  the  motor-cars,  one  is 
inclined  to  say,  and  we  will  keep  the  logic  he 
discards.  Private  perception  of  the  laws  of 
logic  is  something  we  shall  not  be  taxed  for; 
though — let  us  not  deceive  ourselves — we  shall 
have  to  make  sacrifices  to  keep  it.  If  we  can 
acquire  logic,  we  may  have  it.  It  may  be  in 
creasingly  difficult  to  maintain  the  methods  of 
acquiring  it:  the  best  education,  moral  and 
intellectual,  was  becoming  endangered  before 
the  war,  and  there  is  no  telling  what  may  be 
come  of  it  afterward. 

I  seem  to  have  wandered  far  afield  from 
plumbing;  and  yet  plumbing  (as  a  symbol  of 
materialistic  comfort)  is  more  than  germane  to 
the  question.  The  group  whose  problem  I  am 
concerned  with  is  a  very  large  one,  though 
always,  anywhere,  a  minority:  the  professional 
man,  the  man  in  the  smaller  business  position, 
the  man  on  a  salary,  who  has  been  decently 
bred,  and  who  can  never  look  forward  to  any 
real  financial  fortune.  I  do  not  include  every 
one  who  has  to  economize  strictly,  for  a  large 
proportion  of  the  people  who  have  to  econo. 
mize  strictly  are  totally  uneducated  as  to  real 
values.  But  distinctly  I  include  any  of  the  kst 
mentioned  who  are  alive  to  something  besides 

mi 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


materialistic  needs.  I  do  not  include  the  people 
who  want  intellectual  and  aesthetic  goods  only 
for  social  and  snobbish  reasons  or  out  of  blind 
jealousy.  That  group,  in  any  case,  will  cease  to 
exist  if  intellectual  and  aesthetic  goods  cease  to 
have  a  social  value — as  is  more  and  more 
definitely  coming  to  be  the  case.  They  were 
never  anything  but  paid  mercenaries  in  the 
struggle. 

How  are  we  going  to  save,  for  our  children 
and  our  children's  children,  the  real  amenities 
of  life?  Hitherto  the  new  millionaires,  for  rea-> 
sons  of  social  prestige,  have  tended  to  link 
themselves  to  the  group  of  the  civilized.  But 
the  new  millionaire  has  always  been  an  indi 
vidual  case,  and  has,  therefore,  had  to  make 
concessions  to  the  group  already  established. 
What  we  have  never  had  before  is  the  pro 
letariat  suddenly  becoming,  overnight,  in  its 
vast  numbers,  at  once  richer  and  more  powerful 
politically  than  the  little  "educated"  aristoc 
racy.  We  all  know  what  happens  when  that 
happens;  if  we  have  forgotten  the  French 
Revolution  (and  since  1914  a  good  many  of  us 
have)  we  have  the  Russian  Revolution  to 
remind  us.  In  this  morning's  newspaper  I  saw 
that  the  daily  bread  ration  in  Petrograd  was 
one-half  a  pound  for  the  proletariat,  one-eighth 
of  a  pound  for  the  bourgeoisie.  That  may  or 
may  not  be  true,  but  there  is  nothing  in  known 
facts  to  make  it  incredible.  Even  granting  that 

[16] 


THE  NEW  SIMPLICITY 


skilled  labor  is  not  going  to  Bolshevize  itself 
completely,  there  is  no  doubt  that  the  minority 
of  which  I  speak  is  going  to  be  virtually,  if  not 
theoretically,  discriminated  against  Labor  is 
not  going  to  draw  distinctions  between  employ 
ers  of  labor;  the  college  professor  is  going  to 
have  to  pay  the  plumber,  the  carpenter,  at  as 
exorbitant  rates  as  the  great  manufacturer. 
Any  one  who  employs  labor  at  all — even  if  it 
is  only  to  repair  a  leak — is  going  to  be  gouged. 
All  along  the  line,  the  producers  of  every  ne 
cessary  element  in  civilized  physical  existence 
are  going  to  rob  the  ultimate  consumer.  It  is 
labor  that  is  responsible  for  the  high  cost  of 
living.  Labor  may  say  that  the  high  cost  of 
living  is  responsible  for  its  increased  demands. 
In  point  of  fact,  there  is  every  evidence  that 
labor  at  present  is  demanding  money,  not  for 
the  necessities  of  life,  but  for  the  luxuries — 
just  like  the  capitalists  they  have  so  inveighed 
against.  One  would  have  to  be  a  professional 
reformer  to  be  shocked.  Any  knowledge  of 
human  nature  leaves  one  perfectly  unsurprised 
by  this  phenomenon.  Most  men  have  always 
wanted  as  much  as  they  could  get;  and  posses 
sion  has  always  blunted  the  fine  edge  of  their 
altruism.  Ttat  is  what  labor  has  always  said 
about  the  employers  of  labor;  and  the  employ 
ers  can  say  it  quite  as  truly  of  the  employed. 
So  long  as  you  make  the  basis  of  life  material 
istic,  this  law  will  prevail. 

[17] 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


What,  then,  are  we  going  to  do  about  it? 
We  shall  not  be  able  to  afford  many  of  the 
luxuries  we  once  thought  necessities,  and  we 
must  decide,  with  the  utmost  possible  wisdom, 
what  are  necessities  and  what  are  not.  We  had 
better  make  our  list  as  short  as  possible,  at 
that.  Obvious  luxuries  we  shall  not  have: 
motor-cars,  fine  clothing,  plenty  of  domestic 
service,  the  joys  of  travel.  It  is  costing  us  more, 
all  the  time,  to  provide  the  hygienic  necessities 
for  our  children :  pure  milk,  nourishing  food, 
good  air,  healthful  recreation,  seasonable  cloth 
ing.  I  do  not  mean  complicated  food,  or  ex 
travagant  amusements,  or  elaborate  clothing; 
I  mean  the  irreducible  minimum  required  for 
health  and  simple  comfort  and  decency.  And 
we  cannot  all — especially  the  professional  peo 
ple — go  back  to  the  farm  and  live  on  our  own 
produce.  We  have  to  struggle  along  as  best  we 
can  in  the  communities  to  which  our  work  has 
called  us. 

In  some  ways  the  life  of  the  spirit  and  the 
life  of  the  intellect  have  always  been  expensive. 
The  more  obvious  material  comforts — rich 
food,  for  example — have  not  been  necessary  to 
either.  Neither,  in  a  sense,  has  fine  clothing  or 
expensive  furniture.  Yet  it  must  be  remem 
bered  that  both  the  life  of  the  spirit  and  the 
life  of  the  intellect  tend,  in  most  cases,  to 
develop  the  sense  of  beauty;  and  that  too  much 
ugliness  can  become  a  pain  and  an  obstacle  to 

[181 


THE  NEW  SIMPLICITY 


calm.  There  is  a  simplicity  that  is  pleasing,  and 
a  simplicity  that  is  hideous.  Leaving  aside  the 
social  importance  of  good  clothes  and  good 
furniture,  there  is,  in  downright  ugliness,  a 
power  to  fret  the  soul,  a  power  to  lessen  the 
power  to  work.  But  we  will  neglect,  for  the 
moment,  the  aesthetic  side  of  it.  In  the  matter 
of  food  we  will  willingly  simplify.  In  the  mat 
ter  of  adornment,  whether  of  our  persons  or 
of  our  houses,  we  shall  have  to  simplify,  and 
we  can  only  hope  that  our  simplification  can  be 
conducted  more  along  quantitative  than  along 
qualitative  lines.  We  shall  try  to  omit  rather 
than  commit;  to  be  austere  rather  than  cheap. 
The  matter  of  servants  is  going  to  hit  us 
harder;  for  only  with  "help" — in  the  quite 
literal  sense — can  we  manage  to  get  any  peace 
or  any  time,  in  the  hours  left  free  by  our 
wage-earning,  for  reading,  for  contemplation, 
for  conversation.  The  "general  houseworker" 
has  tended  to  disappear;  which  is  an  acknowl 
edgment  that  when  a  great  many  different 
things  have  to  be  done,  one  human  being  can 
not  stand  the  strain.  Only  by  her  being  helped 
out  by  the  family,  only  by  some  features  of 
household  service  being  scanted  or  ill  done, 
could  the  general  houseworker  ever  manage  to 
keep  outside  her  job.  The  good  cook  could  not 
also  be  the  perfect  parlor-maid  and  the  perfect 
child's  nurse.  Neither  can  the  good  physician, 
the  good  lawyer,  the  good  clergyman,  also  be 

[19] 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


the  perfect  choreman,  the  perfect  gardener, 
and  the  perfect  butler — with  hours  of  casual 
bookkeeping,  plumbing,  and  carpentering.  Even 
if  he  had  the  talent,  he  would  not  have  the 
time;  for  the  physician,  the  lawyer,  and  the 
clergyman  are  not  safeguarded  by  an  "eight- 
hour  day."  His  wife,  moreover,  even  if  she 
has  no  private  intellectual  interests,  cannot  suf 
fice  to  all  the  modern  domestic  tasks  any  more 
than  can  the  general  houseworker,  who  has 
faded  out  of  existence  precisely  because  she 
could  not.  We  shall  modify  as  we  can;  shall 
have  our  food  sent  in  from  outside  where  that 
is  possible;  shall  buy  vacuum  cleaners  (on  the 
instalment  plan)  ;  shall  win  occasional  hours  of 
freedom  by  hiring  some  safe  person  to  come  in 
and  watch  over  the  children  while  they v  sleep. 
Hospitality  will,  of  necessity,  be  much  cur 
tailed.  Our  personal  freedom — in  any  familiar 
sense  of  the  term — will  be  almost  nil.  We 
might  defy  our  house,  our  garden,  our  table, 
our  door-bell,  to  shackle  us;  but  we  cannot 
defy  our  children  to  shackle  us. 

In  these  ways,  we  shall  probably  intrigue  for 
the  life  of  the  spirit,  the  life  of  the  intellect. 
But,  still,  they  are  expensive.  Education — good 
education — is,  in  the  first  place,  expensive.  I  do 
not  know  how  much  it  costs  to  make  a  man  a 
good  plumber  or  a  good  coal-miner  or  a  good 
carpenter;  but  I  am  sure  it  does  not  cost  so 
much  as  it  does  to  make  him  a  good  doctor  or 

[20] 


THE  NEW  SIMPLICITY 


a  good  clergyman.  It  takes  seven  years  after 
the  "prep"  school  or  the  high  school  to  start 
the  professional  man  on  his  road,  costing  fairly 
heavily  all  the  time.  That  is  why  I  said  that 
skilled  labor  is  overpaid — it  gets  an  exorbitant 
return  for  its  expenditure.  Most  of  us  hope  to 
have  college  for  our  boys,  even  if  they  do  not 
take  up  a  profession — just  because  we  think 
that  education  is  going  to  matter  to  a  man,  all 
his  life,  no  matter  in  what  field  he  works.  The 
joys  of  travel,  as  I  intimated,  are  going  to  be 
cut  out  for  most  of  us ;  the  opera  and  the  play 
will  become  infrequent  blessings.  But  we  shall 
have  to  have  some  books — even  if  we  do  not 
start  the  furnace  until  December.  Indeed,  the 
books  we  have  ourselves  are  perhaps  going  to 
be  our  best  guarantee  of  our  children's  being 
educated  at  all.  To  be  sure,  we  shall  be  taxed 
on  them,  with  increasing  heaviness;  but  then, 
the  coal-miner  will  (let  us  hope)  be  taxed  on 
his  motor-car. 

It  may  be  that  we  shall  come  to  state- 
endowed  motherhood,  and  all  the  rest.  But 
the  trouble  is  that  all  these  socialistic  schemes 
are  based  on  a  lower-class  demand  on  life. 
State  endowment  of  motherhood  will  perhaps 
have  to  come ;  but  what  does  it  guarantee  except 
the  child  born  under  decent  conditions?  The 
health  of  the  mother,  and  through  her  of  the 
child,  is  to  be  safeguarded.  Very  well.  Et  apres? 
Pure  milk  may  be  provided  at  municipal  sta- 
[21! 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


tions;  there  will  be  a  day  nursery  and  then  a 
public  kindergarten.  There  will  follow  —  if 
modern  "educators"  have  their  way  —  the 
whole  desolating  career  in  the  public  schools, 
where  real  education  is  reduced  to  a  minimum, 
and  "vocational"  training  is  substituted.  The 
child  will,  in  time,  be  graduated  into  the  ranks 
of  skilled  labor,  and  perhaps  will  eventually 
have  his  motor-car  and  his  tiled  bathroom  and 
his  "movie"  every  night. 

Yet  for  some  of  us  this  is  not  a  supremely 
cheering  prospect,  because  it  is  a  wholly  ma 
terialistic  vision.  Certainly  it  is  a  good  thing  to 
start  with  health  as  a  requisite.  Certainly  every 
thing  that  can  be  done  to  insure  a  healthy 
childhood,  in  every  case  where  it  is  physically 
possible,  should  be  done.  But  the  great  mistake 
of  the  reformers  is  to  believe  that  life  begins 
and  ends  with  health,  and  that  happiness  be 
gins  and  ends  with  a  full  stomach  and  the 
power  to  enjoy  physical  pleasures,  even  of  the 
finer  kind.  It  may  be  that  the  enormous  expense 
of  guaranteeing  health  to  all  children  born  in 
our  vast  American  community  will  take  all  the 
money  that  the  community  has.  It  may  be  that 
no  one  will  ever  be  free  to  devote  his  health  to 
pursuing  the  life  of  the  mind  and  the  spirit — 
to  the  purposes,  that  is,  of  civilization  not 
purely  physical.  But  we  have  not  come  to  that 
yet;  and  the  war  is  there  to  remind  us  that  we 
really  do  not  know  precisely  what  will  come. 

[22] 


THE  NEW  SIMPLICITY 


If  real  socialism — as  distinguished  from  our 
temporary  utilization  of  certain  socialistic 
methods — comes,  we  shall  inevitably  turn  our 
backs  on  civilization  for  a  time.  Successful 
socialism  depends  on  the  perfectibility  of  man. 
Unless  all,  or  nearly  all,  men  are  high-minded 
and  clear-sighted,  it  is  bound  to  be  a  rotten 
failure  in  any  but  a  physical  sense.  Even  though 
it  is  altruism,  socialism  means  materialism.  You 
can  guarantee  the  things  of  the  body  to  every 
one,  but  you  cannot  guarantee  the  things  of  the 
spirit  to  every  one ;  you  can  guarantee  only  that 
the  opportunity  to  seek  them  shall  not  be  de 
nied  to  any  one  who  chooses  to  seek  them. 
And  socialism,  believing  as  it  must  (to  hold  its 
head  high)  in  the  spiritual  as  well  as  the  politi 
cal  equality  of  men,  is  not  going  to  create  spe 
cial  opportunities  for  the  special  case.  "To  hell 
with  the  special  case'*  is  implicit  in  the  socialist 
slogan.  Do  you  see  any  majority,  anywhere,  in 
this  imperfect  and  irreligious  world,  admitting 
that  the  minority  is  precious?  That  any  minor 
ity  is  precious?  Is  there  any  evidence  whatever 
that  the  socialist  is  less  avid  of  personal  politi 
cal  power,  less  averse  to  demagogic  methods, 
than  the  other  person?  Does  he  himself  go  far 
to  prove  his  perfectionism?  A  good  many 
socialists  are  calling  other  socialists  names 
because  they  put  nationality  before  interna- 
tionality;  though  any  one  with  any  sense  could 
have  told  them  beforehand  that  they  would, 

[23] 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


because  human  beings  are — fortunately  or  un 
fortunately  —  like  that.  Lenin  and  Trotzky 
are  disappointed  because  the  German  socialists 
do  not  rise  to  betray  their  rulers;  and  some 
socialists  are  disappointed  because  Lenin  and 
Trotzky  appear  to  be  selling  Russia  out  to 
Germany  in  order  to  keep  themselves — two 
individuals — in  places  of  power.  Every  one  is 
calling  names  all  round;  and  if  socialism  were 
anything  in  particular,  it  would  (one  would 
think)  be  very  sorry  for  itself. 

What  is  clear  is  this:  that  the  socialization 
of  governments  places  vast  power  in  the  hands 
of  the  skilled  laborer.  It  is  only  in  order  that 
labor  shall  produce  as  fast  and  as  furiously  as 
possible  that  we  have  socialized  our  national 
organization.  We  need,  chiefly  for  war's  sake, 
certain  physical  things — food,  munitions,  coal, 
khaki  clothing,  and  transportation  for  the 
same.  We  are  calling  for  Y.  M.  C.  A.  men, 
and  K.  of  C.,  and  chaplains;  but  what  we 
really  expect  of  them,  more  than  anything  else, 
is  to  go  under  fire,  if  necessary,  to  give  the  sol 
diers  tobacco  and  hot  chocolate.  The  news 
papers  lay  eager  and  delighted  stress  on  the 
unclerical  nature  of  the  services  these  gentle 
men  find  themselves  cheerfully  performing. 
War,  you  see,  is  a  physical  business.  Of  the 
spiritual  side  of  it  I  am  not  going  to  speak.  No 
one  really  can  speak  of  it  in  terms  of  actual 
achievement  until  the  armies  have  come  home 


THE  .NEW  SIMPLICITY 


and  we  see  what  manner  of  men  they  are.  You 
cannot  tell  from  the  straws  you  see  which  way 
the  great  last  wind  of  all  is  going  to  blow. 
Some  wise  people  doubt  whether  the  veterans 
of  this  war  are  going  to  spiritualize  the  world. 
Many  of  them  will  have  had,  at  this  or  that 
supreme  moment,  something  akin  to  a  spiritual 
revelation.  But  the  spiritual  adventure  is  a  des 
perately  and  exclusively  personal  thing;  you 
cannot  socialize  it.  It  is  incommunicable,  and 
for  the  most  part  inexpressible.  The  attempt  to 
socialize  a  spiritual  experience  ends  in  the 
camp-meeting;  it  goes  no  farther.  Like  all  men 
tal  ecstasies,  it  cannot  be  felt  simultaneously  by 
millions  of  people.  I  fancy  that  the  opinions 
the  veterans  are  going  to  express  at  the  polls 
are  quite  unforeknowable.  We  are  all  willingly 
kow-towing  to  the  materialists  for  the  sake  of 
the  armies.  Whether  the  armies  will  wish  to 
kow-tow  to  them  when  the  war  is  over  is  a  ques 
tion  more  difficult  of  present  solution  than  the 
Balkan  boundaries.  Certainly,  if  the  armies  have 
developed  an  esprit  de  corps  and  a  philosophy 
of  their  own,  they  will  be  listened  to.  We  shall 
inevitably  be  very  sentimental  about  them. 
Whether  we  shall  continue  to  be  sentimental 
about  the  man  who  selected  this  moment  to 
hold  up  his  country  and  his  compatriots  for 
exorbitant  pay,  and  demonstrated  his  patriot 
ism  by  earning  it,  I  do  not  know.  We  can  deal 
only  with  the  present  situation. 

[25] 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


What,  the  present  outlook  being  what  it  is, 
can  we  count  on  for  our  children?  We  shall  be 
practically  aided,  in  time,  as  I  have  said,  by  all 
sorts  of  co-operative  schemes — invented  for 
the  use  of  the  very  poor,  and  adapted  and 
expanded,  of  necessity,  for  the  not  quite  so 
poor.  Some  of  the  amenities  of  life,  some  of 
the  space  and  the  privacy,  will  have  gone  irre 
trievably.  After  considerations  of  health  come 
considerations  of  education.  We  shall  not  be 
able,  probably,  to  afford  private  schools  for 
our  children;  and  our  sole  comfort  must  be 
that  most  private  schools  are  not  much  good, 
anyhow.  They  are  a  little  safer  gamble,  in  most 
communities,  than  the  public  schools.  That  is 
all.  We,  the  parents,  must  supplement  the  bad 
teaching  as  best  we  can,  must  keep  at  least 
some  spark  of  intelligent  interest  in  the  uni 
verse  alive  by  the  gas-log.  It  may  well  become 
our  painful  and  subversive  duty  to  inform  our 
children,  from  the  beginning,  that  what  is  be 
ing  offered  them  by  the  state  as  education  is 
not  really  education  at  all;  and  that  teaching  a 
boy  how  to  make  bookshelves  is  in  no  sense  a 
substitute  for  teaching  him  to  read  and  appre 
ciate  Latin.  (Better  not  mention  Greek!)  It  is 
very  desirable,  if  not  absolutely  necessary,  for 
our  daughter  to  know  how  to  cook;  but  we 
must  not  permit  her  to  consider  that  domestic 
science  is  education,  in  the  proper  sense.  We 
must  keep  the  fact  before  ourselves  and  before 

[26] 


THE  NEW  SIMPLICITY 


the  next  generation  that  the  training  of  the 
mind  does  not  mean  quite  the  same  thing  as 
the  training  of  the  muscles.  Time  was  when  a 
cobbler — and  I  do  not  mean  anything  so  re 
mote  and  legendary  as  Hans  Sachs — found 
philosophy  a  very  natural  complement  to  cob 
bling.  I  knew  a  cobbler  in  my  childhood  who 
was  much  in  demand  among  the  intellectuals, 
as  being  one  of  the  few  people  who  could 
expound  Emerson's  transcendentalism  in  a 
completely  satisfactory  way.  He  went  about — 
I  can  still  recall  the  spun  snow  of  his  hair,  the 
canny  saintliness  of  his  much-modelled  face,  the 
thin  figure  under  the  long  black  cloak  —  to 
philosophical  conferences,  to  discuss  metaphy 
sics  with  the  metaphysicians;  and  returned  to 
sit  in  his  little  shop  and  cobble  shoes.  But  one 
has  yet  to  hear  of  philosophy's  coming  from  a 
member  of  the  lasters'  union.  Machinery  means 
specialization;  and  it  is  an  old  story  that  there 
is  no  mental  comfort  or  development  in  repeat 
ing  the  same  gesture  for  eight  hours  a  day, 
even  if  one  has  time  and  a  half  for  overtime. 
The  single  gesture  is  not  educative.  When  you 
saw  the  shoe  as  an  entity,  when  it  grew  under 
your  hands  and  you  built  up  the  whole  con 
sciously  from  the  related  parts;  even  when  you 
were  a  mere  cobbler,  a  physician  to  sick  shoes, 
and  had  to  know  the  whole  shoe-organism — 
there  was  something  in  that  humblest,  most 
physical  of  tasks  which  demanded  a  conception 

[27] 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


in  the  brain.  That  time  is  gone,  and  if  William 
Morris  in  the  flesh  could  not  bring  it  back, 
certainly  his  ghost  will  not.  But  if  you  think 
for  a  moment  of  the  difference  in  mental  atti 
tude  and  mental  grasp,  it  shows  up  skilled 
labor  for  what  it  is. 

I  am  far  from  saying  that,  in  this  much 
simpler  world  which  the  increasing  complica 
tion  of  life  is  going,  paradoxically,  to  create 
for  some  of  us,  it  is  a  bad  thing  that  children 
should  be  "vocationally"  trained.  (You  cannot 
say  "vocationally  educated,"  for  that  is  virtu 
ally  a  contradiction  in  terms.)  Even  so,  it  is 
only  to  a  very  limited  degree  that  our  sons  can 
be,  in  the  intervals,  their  own  plumbers  or 
their  own  carpenters  or  their  own  masons,  for 
the  unions  will  never  allow  it.  It  is  a  very 
minor  tinkering  that  is  permitted  to  the  private 
person.  You  cannot  help  to  paint  your  own 
woodwork  in  your  own  house,  for  the  union 
painter  will  leave  his  job  if  you  touch  your 
private  paint-brush  in  his  presence.  What  good, 
after  all,  is  this  famous  vocational  training, 
except  as  you  definitely  choose  to  follow 
through  life  some  one  of  the  trades  they  teach 
you?  It  will  not  really  make  the  whole  man 
more  efficient;  for  he  will  not  be  allowed  to 
use  his  potential  efficiency.  It  may  teach  him 
whether  he  prefers  to  be  a  steamfitter  or  a 
bricklayer;  but  it  cannot  guarantee  him  any 
power  to  practise  either  steamfitting  or  brick- 


THE  NEW  SIMPLICITY 


laying,  unless  he  is  willing  to  forsake  all  else 
and  cling  only  to  that.  Never  was  such  non 
sense  talked  by  any  one  as  by  the  new  "edu 
cators."  Labor  frankly  uses  the  argument  of 
might  and  the  big  stick;  but  labor,  as  far  as  I 
know,  does  not  pretend  that  it  is  something 
else.  It  rests  its  case  cynically  on  our  own  pam 
pered  inability  to  get  on  without  it 

"Philosophy  can  bake  no  bread,"  replied 
some  philosopher  to  his  critics,  "but  it  can  give 
us  God,  freedom,  and  immortality."  Those  are 
the  last  things,  I  take  it,  that  modern  philoso 
phy  is  really  concerned  with  giving  us;  but  the 
perversity  of  one  generation  need  not  obscure 
all  history.  It  is  possible  for  the  contemplation 
of  great  ideas,  of  great  art,  of  great  poetry, 
of  the  epic  motions  of  the  human  race  as  re 
vealed  in  history,  to  mitigate  physical  depriva 
tion.  It  is  possible  to  have  plain  living  and  high 
thinking  together — though  it  is  not  easy,  and 
never  has  been,  and  some  of  the  best-known 
exponents  of  that  theory  have  been  pitiful  fail 
ures.  Certainly  we  of  the  minority  must  accept 
for  ourselves  austerities  we  were  not  bred  to 
in  our  easy-going,  materialistic  generation. 
Without  taking,  like  St.  Simeon,  to  the  wilful 
discomfort  of  a  pillar,  we  must  learn  to  do 
without  a  hundred  "necessities"  that  Dante 
and  Shakespeare  never  dreamed  of.  We  must 
keep  it  possible  for  our  children  to  delight  in 
Dante  and  Shakespeare;  we  must  not  let  the 

[29] 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


authentic  intellectual  thrill  disappear  from  the 
world.  And,  for  that,  we  must  insist  that  the 
past  be  not  closed  to  them,  and  that  learning 
shall  not  be  an  unknown  good.  They  will  have 
to  do  it  on  bread  and  milk,  not  on  caviare;  but 
it  can  be  done  on  bread  and  milk.  That  is  the 
point. 

I  confess  that  as  I  look  forth  in  these  dis 
tressed  times  on  the  vast  American  scene,  I 
find  myself  pinning  my  hope  to  two  things — 
the  self-consciousness  of  this  minority,  and  the 
older  Eastern  universities.  For  unless  we  plan 
our  simplicities  cannily,  the  other  people  will 
have  won  out;  and  unless  the  older  universities 
keep  up  a  standard  of  learning,  hold  the  door 
open,  by  main  force,  to  the  past,  the  garnered 
lore  of  the  world  will  fail  us.  We  shall  progress 
— but  blindly,  as  the  brute  creation.  The  fact 
is  that  we  are  living  in  an  obscurantist  epoch. 
For  surely  it  is  obscurantism  to  deny  the  legiti 
macy  of  any  field  of  knowledge  or  of  virtue, 
and  those  folk  who  would  reduce  everything  to 
a  physical  basis  are  as  deadly  foes  of  light  as 
their  ancestors  who  saw  in  physical  experi 
ments  nothing  but  the  black  art.  Every  sane 
person  wants  science  left  free  to  accomplish 
its  marvellous  work;  but  no  sane  person  past 
early  youth  would  say,  as  a  young  woman 
fresh  from  her  college  laboratories  said  to  me 
a  few  days  since,  that  chemistry  is  the  root  of 
all  knowledge.  The  Protestants,  when  they 

[30] 


THE  NEW  SIMPLICITY 


were  on  top,  were  as  given  to  obscurantism, 
and  its  accompaniment  of  persecution,  as  the 
Catholics. 

In  the  matter  of  education,  as  I  have  sug 
gested,  we  shall  have  to  rely  on  the  older 
colleges  of  the  East.  We  cannot  count  on  the 
West  to  help  us,  for  the  West  is  cursed  with 
state  universities.  It  is  by  no  means  my  inten 
tion  or  my  private  inclination  to  minimize  the 
value  of  the  state  universities.  The  point  is 
that  they  are  uncertain ;  they  are  not  free ;  they 
are  dependent,  in  the  last  analysis,  on  public 
favor,  which  means  public  funds,  on  a  kind  of 
initiative  and  referendum.  They  may  have 
good  luck  and  become  great  schools  of  learn 
ing;  they  may  have  bad  luck  and  become  indif 
ferent  and  negligible  places.  They  are  not 
really  allowed  to  set  their  own  standards;  they 
must  ever  be  compromising  with  the  personnel 
of  state  legislatures.  The  private  colleges  and 
universities  of  the  East  at  least  are  not  depend 
ent  on  politics.  Their  funds  are  for  the  most 
part  inadequate,  but  they  do  not  have  to 
change  their  curricula  to  please  people  who 
know  nothing  about  what  a  curriculum  should 
be.  As  long  as  their  private  fortunes  last,  they 
can  afford  to  say  the  thing  which  they  believe 
to  be  true.  One  of  the  most  heartening  things 
that  have  happened  since  1914  is  the  acquisi 
tion  of  great  wealth  by  Yale  University.  It 
means — one  hopes — that  one  at  least  of  our 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


old  academic  foundations  can  snap  its  fingers 
at  ignorance  enthroned;  that  it  can  send  out  its 
thousands  endowed  with  some  sense  of  intel 
lectual  values.  Intellectual  values  are  not  the 
only  ones;  but  most  sane  people  believe  that 
only  by  the  rigid  training  of  the  mind  can 
human  beings  be  taught  wise  living  and  moral 
values.  There  is  no  morality  by  instinct,  though 
there  can  be  morality  by  inherited  inhibitions. 
There  is  no  social  salvation — in  the  end — 
without  taking  thought;  without  mastery  of 
logic  and  application  of  logic  to  human  experi 
ence.  These  things,  because  they  are  not  the 
natural  man,  are  not  carelessly  come  by;  they 
must  be  deliberately  achieved.  You  will  not 
learn  them  from  the  Bolsheviki,  or  from  the 
I.  W.  W.,  or  even  from  Mr.  Arthur  Hender 
son.  A  great  deal  is  said  nowadays  about  prac 
tical  politics  and  the  role  of  the  practical  man 
in  building  the  social  structure.  Before  you  can 
carry  out  an  idea  you  must  have  the  idea. 
You  cannot  get  rid  of  the  world  of  abstract 
thought.  One  after  the  other,  leaders  of  the 
Church  are  laying  more  and  more  stress  on 
religion's  being  a  strictly  social  matter.  Per 
haps  it  is,  though  I  do  not  believe  it.  I  should 
have  said  that  social  regeneration  was  a  by 
product  of  religion,  not  religion  itself.  But 
even  the  folk  who  think  that  Christianity 
means  no  slums,  and  means  little  else,  derive 
their  sanction — or  think  they  do — from  Christ, 


THE  NEW  SIMPLICITY 


who  dealt  in  abstract  ideas  more  exclusively 
than  any  other  religious  teacher  the  world  has 
had. 

We  must,  then,  seriously  facing  the  moral, 
political,  and  physical  conditions  of  our  time, 
be  frankly  ascetic.  We  must  make  our  children 
healthy,  first  of  all — if  only  because  specialists 
will  be  beyond  our  pocketbooks.  I  have  implied 
that  the  combination  of  plain  living  and  high 
thinking  is  a  difficult  one;  I  fancy  it  is  the  most 
difficult  in  the  world.  "The  hand  of  little  em 
ployment  hath  the  daintier  sense."  We  shall 
obliterate  the  coarser  contacts,  as  far  as  pos 
sible,  not  by  engaging  other  people  to  take  the 
burden  of  those  coarser  contacts,  but  by  buy 
ing,  as  we  can,  the  machinery  that  will  suffice 
to  them  impersonally.  We  shall  "co-operate" 
to  the  limit  of  our  incomes,  losing  thereby,  I 
repeat,  many  of  the  amenities  which  tend  to 
civilize.  We  shall  not  sleep  soft,  we  shall  not 
live  high,  and  we  shall  do  without  external 
beauty  to  a  painful  extent.  We  shall  exist  in 
cramped  quarters,  and  if  we  achieve  the  dig 
nity  of  one  spacious  room,  that  will  be  a  great 
deal.  We  cannot  hope  to  furnish  it  fittingly. 
But  if  we  have  a  dollar  to  spend  on  some  wild 
excess,  we  shall  spend  it  on  a  book,  not  on 
asparagus  out  of  season.  If  we  have  a  holiday, 
we  shall  not  go  to  Europe  or  Asia,  which 
would  be  beyond  our  means;  but  we  shall  find 
some  quiet  spot  where  there  will  at  least  be 

[33] 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


trees  and  sky  and  no  motor-cars  or  aeroplanes. 
We  shall,  I  hope,  ameliorate  our  lack  of  space 
and  privacy  by  a  very  perfectly  developed  cour 
tesy  and  by  the  capacity  for  silence.  It  sounds 
monastic,  and,  at  its  best,  monastic  it  will  be. 
Certain  things  we  shall  have  given  up  at  the 
start;  certain  ambitions  will  have  been  erased 
from  our  tablets.  We  shall  not  compete  with, 
or  interfere  with,  the  lords  of  this  world.  We 
shall  do  our  modest  work,  and  receive  our 
modest  pay,  and  by  a  corresponding  modesty 
of  life  and  temper  we  shall  disarm,  we  hope, 
the  unsympathetic  and  uncomprehending.  Our 
kingdom  cannot  be  of  this  world;  and  instead 
of  complaining  and  criticizing,  we  must  apply 
ourselves  to  realizing  that  our  compensations 
can  be  made  greater  than  our  losses.  We  shall 
be  passionately  concerned  with  humanity;  the 
more  so,  that  we  shall  endeavor  to  be  aware 
of  the  voice  of  God  as  well  as  of  the  voice  of 
the  people.  We  shall  not  be  snobs  in  any  sense ; 
for  we  shall  have  the  same  charity  for  other 
people's  choices  that  we  beg  them  to  have  for 
ours.  Besides,  snobbishness  dies  out  quickly — 
in  America,  at  least — among  the  impoverished. 
Even  those  who  find  all  this  an  intolerable 
idea  will  dub  it  Utopian.  A  counsel  of  perfec 
tion  it  certainly  is.  But  the  higher  the  standard 
we  set  for  ourselves  the  less  likely  we  are  to 
put  up  with  a  low  one.  And  if  we  merely  drift, 
I  fear  we  shall  find  ourselves  getting  nothing — 

[34] 


THE  NEW  SIMPLICITY 


wearing  ourselves  out  in  the  unequal,  familiar 
race  for  physical  privileges,  and  leaving  to  one 
side  the  intangible  goods.  We  can  guarantee 
our  children  nothing  except  that  they  shall  be 
armored  against  certain  kinds  of  suffering;  the 
lust  of  non-essentials,  for  example.  I  do  not 
say  that  we  shall  not  lose  much  that  our  best 
interest  would  suggest  our  having;  but  we  shall 
not  lose  everything.  And  with  the  new  simplic 
ity  will  come  some  of  the  compensations  of 
earlier  simplicity.  The  man  who  has  three 
things  gets  more  pleasure  out  of  one  than  does 
the  man  who  has  a  hundred.  Perhaps  we  shall 
capture  the  "joy  in  widest  commonalty  spread." 
A  rose  will  always  be  cheaper  than  an  alligator 
pear,  and  it  is  quite  possible  to  enjoy  it  as 
much  and  as  vividly.  We  shall  be  very  grateful, 
I  have  no  doubt,  to  Thomas  Edison  and  the 
other  genii  of  democracy.  In  some  ways  we 
shall  fare  better  than  folk  of  our  clan  in 
Europe.  We  must  thank  our  stars  for  plumbing 
— itself  a  "joy  in  widest  commonalty  spread." 
But  we  shall  value  it  chiefly  as  it  releases  time 
for  better  things,  and  those  better  things  not 
physical  pleasures. 

Not  only  shall  we  not  glorify  our  plumbing 
with  marble;  we  shall  see  that  there  is  really 
no  sense  in  marble  when  porcelain  will  do  as 
well — that  marble  has  better  uses  and  should 
be  kept  for  them.  Not  only  shall  we  have  no 
ermine  to  shield  us  from  the  cold ;  we  shall  see 

[35] 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


that  ermine  was  more  beautiful  when  rarely 
and  ritually  worn.  We  shall  learn  to  take  pleas 
ure  in  beautiful  things  that  do  not  and  never 
can  belong  to  us;  and  we  shall  purge  ourselves 
of  the  ignoble  passion  of  envy.  But  the  power 
to  discriminate  between  the  truth  and  a  lie — 
which  is  the  foundation  of  all  moral  and  intel 
lectual  enjoyment — we  shall  cling  to  with 
greed.  For  in  keeping  that  we  rob  no  one,  and 
insult  no  law.  I  am  far  from  believing  that 
any  group  of  people  can  achieve  all  this  with 
completeness.  But  I  believe  we  shall  do  well 
to  set  it  before  us  as  a  goal. 


[36] 


DRESS  AND  THE  WOMAN 

THE  creed  and  the  fallacy  of  fashion,  it 
seems  to  me,  have  seldom  been  better 
expressed  than  in  the  retort  once  made  to 
a  friend  of  mine,  in  one  of  our  more  conserva 
tive  New  England  towns.  Sojourning  there  for 
a  time,  she  had  reason  to  order  a  hat  from  a 
local  milliner.  When  she  tried  it  on,  it  did  not 
resemble  in  the  least  the  headgear  of  the  me 
tropolis.  "They  are  wearing  hats  very  low,  this 
year,  you  know,"  she  protested.  "Ah,"  was  the 
unperturbed  reply,  "they  are  wearing  them 
high  in  Newburyport."  I  do  not  remember  the 
fate  of  the  hat — which  is  unimportant;  but  the 
statement  has  remained  with  me  for  years  as 
one  of  the  most  significant  imaginable.  It  was 
at  once  the  glorification  and  the  reductio  ad 
absurdum  of  modishness.  My  friend  and  the 
milliner  spoke  in  the  same  spirit.  For  provin 
cialism  in  dress  consists  merely  in  adhering 
rigidly  to  the  a<u  ant-dernier  en.  The  object  of 
allegiance  may  be,  in  the  provinces,  a  little 
tardily  come  up  with;  but  the  rigidity  is  pre 
cisely  the  rigidity  of  the  rue  de  la  Paix.  Fash 
ion  is  not  simply  a  question  of  longitude. 

The  sense  of  mode  might  be  considered,  as 
so  many  other  things  have  been,  the  possession 

[37] 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


that  distinguishes  man  from  the  beasts.  The 
peacock  is  no  proof  to  the  contrary;  for  if,  as 
scientists  suggest  to  us,  all  radiant  plumage  has 
been  developed  as  a  means  of  attraction,  at 
least  the  ideal  of  adornment  has  been,  in  the 
case  of  the  birds,  consistently  aesthetic.  The 
feathery  fashions  have  always  been  intrinsic 
ally  good.  Whereas  (to  be  flippant)  the  at 
traction  exercised  by  the  latest  mode  would 
seem  usually  to  point  to  some  principle  of 
unnatural  selection.  The  bird  of  Paradise,  who 
is  probably  irresistible  in  his  native  forest,  can 
be  positively  repellent  on  a  hat.  Yes;  the  sense 
of  mode  is  curiously  different  from  the  sense 
of  beauty.  Let  us,  however,  be  serious. 

Preachers  of  all  time — and  satirists,  who 
are  lay-preachers  —  have  declaimed  against 
female  extravagance  in  dress.  It  must  be 
confessed  that  the  sex  of  the  more  peace 
ful  pursuits  has  been  the  more  exuberantly 
adorned.  The  male  costume  worn,  say,  at  the 
court  of  Henri  III,  was  every  bit  as  bad  as 
anything  that  contemporary  ladies  could  have 
boasted;  but  even  in  the  time  of  Henri  III,  a 
man  had  to  hold  himself  ready  for  the  saddle 
and  the  tented  field.  Some  part  of  his  life  was 
bound  to  be  spent  in  garments  as  rational  as 
he  could  conceive  them.  It  was  the  female  sex 
that  could  expand,  unchecked  and  unpruned, 
into  such  wild  tendrils,  such  orchid-like  incon 
tinent  bloom,  of  "changeable  apparel." 

[38] 


DRESS  AND    THE   WOMAN 


From  the  earliest  times,  it  is  the  woman 
who  has  been  designated  as  the  sinner  in  this 
respect  On  this  point,  the  Old  and  New  Testa 
ments  are,  for  once,  agreed;  Isaiah  and  St. 
Paul  are  at  one.  "The  chains,  and  the  brace 
lets,  and  the  mufflers,  the  bonnets  .  .  .  and  the 
earrings  .  .  .  the  mantles,  and  the  wimples, 
and  the  crisping-pins  .  .  .  the  fine  linen,  and 
the  hoods  and  the  veils,"  the  one  accuses; 
"broidered  hair,  or  gold,  or  pearls,  or  costly 
array,"  complains  the  other.  Ezekiel  thunders 
against  "the  women  that  sew  pillows  to  the 
armholes"  (the  glgot  sleeve  in  the  reign  of 
Zedekiah!)  "and  make  kerchiefs  for  the  head 
of  persons  of  every  stature,  to  hunt  souls." 
And  the  tradition  has  remained.  It  is  perhaps 
the  only  subject  on  which  St.  Ignatius  Loyola 
and  John  Knox  would  have  been  thoroughly 
sympathetic.  One  is  certainly  at  liberty  to  infer 
from  the  chorus  that  it  is  easier  for  a  camel  to 
pass  through  the  needle's  eye  than  for  anything 
really  chic  to  enter  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven. 

All  these  gentlemen,  to  be  sure,  seem  to 
have  objected  to  the  fact  and  purpose  of  femi 
nine  adornment,  rather  than  to  rapid  changes 
in  the  methods  adopted.  But  I  cannot  believe 
that  St.  Paul,  who  scored  the  Attic  curiosity 
born  of  the  Attic  ennui,  would  not  have 
preached  even  more  violently,  had  he  foreseen 
the  need,  against  fashion  than  against  beauty. 
And  is  it  not  fashion  rather  than  beauty  that 

[39] 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


is  subtly  discriminated  against  by  all  religious 
orders?  The  nun,  like  the  Quakeress,  must 
adopt  a  single  color  and  a  single  mode;  though 
nun  and  Quakeress,  both,  often  find  their 
chosen  garb  the  most  becoming  they  could 
possibly  wear.  No  dress  could  be  more  beauti 
ful  than  that  which  I  remember  from  my 
childhood's  convent.  It  fell  in  rich  and  simple 
folds  of  violet — violet  being  neither  purple  nor 
crimson,  but  something  indefinably  magnificent 
midway  between  —  enhanced  by  white  linen 
guimpe  and  cream-colored  veiling.  It  gave  the 
daughter  of  a  French  duke,  I  remember,  the 
aspect  of  a  queen  regnant.  Yet  it  represented 
poverty,  chastity,  and  obedience.  No  one  is 
especially  concerned  with  the  nun's  being  un 
becomingly  clad.  A  subtler  mortification  is  sup 
posed  to  lie  in  her  engaging  to  dress  in  exactly 
the  same  way  all  her  life.  The  mortification  is 
of  course  heightened  by  the  fact  that  she 
shares  her  style  of  dress  with  the  rest  of  the 
community,  regardless  of  type.  But  in  any  case 
the  first  thing  that  the  postulant  renounces  is 
fashionable  clothing.  They  leave  her  curls  to 
be  cut  off  later. 

It  is  not,  however,  with  the  moral  aspect  of 
fashion  that  I  am  concerned.  The  moral  ques 
tion,  indeed,  has  ceased  to  be  very  poignant; 
even  our  Calvinist  great-grandmothers  per 
mitted  a  shy  predominance  of  trimming  on  the 
"congregation  side"  of  their  bonnets.  The 

[40] 


DRESS  AND   THE   WOMAN 


moral  aspect  of  fashion  disguises  itself  nowa 
days  as  an  economic  consideration.  With  eco 
nomic  considerations,  again,  I  have  no  special 
concern.  They  are  writ  large  over  half  the 
printed  pages  of  our  time.  Some  statistician 
every  month  proves  to  us  something  appalling : 
either  that, 

.  .  .  since  our  women  must  walk  gay,  and  money  buys 
their  gear, 

materials  are  adulterated,  or  sewing-women 
are  starved,  or  shop-girls  seek  the  primrose 
path,  or  husbands  die  of  the  strain  in  their  early 
forties.  To  much  the  same  music,  the  New 
York  Customs  officials  stage,  each  day,  an 
elaborate  melodrama  on  the  steamship  piers. 
We  know  that,  from  "Nearseal"  to  "Near- 
silk,"  the  poor  will  sacrifice  comfort  to  cut,  and 
that  a  really  "good"  milliner  makes  a  profit  of 
a  hundred  per  cent  on  each  hat.  These  things 
are  all  true;  and  Heaven  forbid  that  one 
should  shirk  the  economic  question !  But  I  very 
much  doubt  if  either  moralist  or  statistician 
will  turn  the  trick.  Yet  they  have  only,  it  would 
seem,  to  enlist  a  few  other  facts  as  good  as 
their  own,  to  be  quite  sure  of  success. 

For  not  even  the  cynic  will  pretend  that  the 
real  object  of  fashions  is  to  disfigure.  It  is 
quite  without  intention  that  M.  Worth  and 
Mme.  Paquin  and  all  their  prototypes,  con 
geners,  and  successors,  have  become  the  foes 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


of  beauty.  They  have  simply  never  stopped  to 
consider  that  the  very  notion  of  the  changing 
mode  is  the  negation  of  all  aesthetic  law.  The 
most  damning  thing  about  fashions  is  that  they 
make  inevitably,  nine  years  out  of  ten,  for  the 
greatest  ugliness  of  the  greatest  number.  And 
this  is  the  real  Achilles  tendon  of  la  mode. 
Can  anything  be  more  absurd  than  to  impose 
a  single  style  on  the  fat  and  the  thin,  on  the 
minimum  wage  and  the  maximum  income? 

I  admit  that  no  fashion  has  ever  been 
created  expressly  for  the  lean  purse  or  for  the 
fat  woman :  the  dressmaker's  ideal  is  undoubt 
edly  the  thin  millionairess.  But  the  fat  woman 
and  the  lean  purse  must  make  the  best  of  each 
style  in  turn,  as  it  comes  along.  And  if  one  has 
ever  seen  a  fat  woman  in  (for  example)  a 
hobble  skirt — even  in  an  academic  edition  of 
a  hobble  skirt — one  knows  that  this  is  not  a 
light  thing  to  say.  As  for  the  lean  purse,  it  is 
not  only  in  alarmist  articles  that  the  working- 
girl  goes  without  half  her  luncheons  to  buy  a 
rhinestone  sunburst.  One  has  known  the  cases. 
Nor  is  the  coercion  purely  psychological.  The 
cheapest  Eighth  Avenue  suit,  which,  ready- 
made,  costs  something-and-ninety-eight  cents,  is 
sure  to  be  a  hasty  and  sleazy  imitation  (at 
many  removes,  and  losing  something  with 
each)  of  a  Fifth  Avenue  model.  It  is  one  of 
the  few  true  paradoxes  that  people  who  must 
dress  cheaply  must  dress  "in  style."  And  that 

[42] 


DRESS  AND   THE   WOMAN 


is  a  hard  fate  for  the  hypothetical  poor  woman 
with  intelligence,  who  secretly  desires  a  gar 
ment  that  will  be  no  more  conspicuous  next 
year  than  this,  and  longs  to  put  some  of  her 
money  into  good  materials.  It  is  only  a  very 
good  (and  expensive)  dressmaker  whose 
handiwork  can  both  elude  the  exaggerations  of 
the  present  fashion  and  foreshadow  the  essen 
tials  of  the  next.  That  is  another  thing  that 
every  woman  knows. 

The  hypothetical  poor  woman  with  intelli 
gence  must  content  herself  with  looking  a  trav 
esty  on  the  successful  chorus-girl.  This,  unfor 
tunately,  she  comes  only  too  easily  to  do. 
"But,"  some  one  might  object,  "the  poor  wo 
man  is  precisely  an  economic,  not  an  aesthetic 
consideration."  Granted:  yet  since  we  must  all 
dress,  why  not  invent  dresses  that  are  widely 
adaptable — to  different  materials,  to  different 
occasions,  to  different  human  types?  It  would 
purge  our  streets  of  many  a  sorry  and  sordid 
spectacle,  and  in  that  sense  would  be  an 
aesthetic  service  both  particular  and  public. 
But,  as  it  is,  we  must  all  dress  alike:  blonde 
and  brune,  fat  and  thin,  tall  and  short,  rich 
and  poor.  The  socialists  have  threatened  us 
with  no  more  rigid  sisterhood  than  this. 

The  principle  of  fashion  is,  as  I  have  inti 
mated,  the  principle  of  the  kaleidoscope.  A 
new  year  can  only  bring  us  a  new  combination 
of  the  same  elements;  and  about  once  in  so 

[43] 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


often  we  go  back  and  begin  over.  Recently  we 
have  had  rather  a  Napoleonic  tendency.  Occa 
sionally  we  are  Colonial.  We  have  been  known 
to  be  Japanese.  Now  and  then  we  have  a 
severe  classic  moment — usually  very  unbecom 
ing  to  all  of  us.  We  used  to  hear  from  our 
grandmothers  of  silk  dresses  that  could  ustand 
alone. "  What  we  need  now  is  a  silk  dress  that 
could  somehow  manage  to  run. 

There  is  no  reward,  in  the  world  of 
woman's  dress,  for  a  successful  experiment. 
The  most  charming  design  in  the  world  has 
no  future.  One  is  seldom  tempted  to  apostro 
phize  a  fashion  with,  "Verweile  doch!  du  bist  so 
schon!";  but  if  one  were,  the  adjuration  would 
be  as  vain  as  ever.  And  that  is  another  sin 
against  beauty,  for  it  deprives  a  woman  of  the 
privilege  of  dressing  as  best  becomes  her. 
There  is  something  peculiarly  bitter  in  watch 
ing  the  superseding  of  a  mode  that  wholly 
suits  one.  Now  and  then  a  woman  confides  to 
me  her  intention  of  keeping  to  some  style  that 
is  especially  adapted  to  her.  "It  suits  me,  and 
I  am  going  to  stick  to  it,"  she  declares.  She 
has  found  that  it  makes  the  most  of  all  her 
"points";  it  has  given  her,  perhaps,  renewed 
respect  for  her  appearance  and  fresh  zest  for 
life.  Such  a  woman  is  always,  I  believe,  sin 
cerely  congratulated  by  her  friends.  They  do 
not  imitate  her,  but  they  really  and  unmali- 
ciously  envy  her  her  point  of  view.  She  is 

[44] 


DRESS  AND   THE  WOMAN 


proud  of  herself,  and  keeps  to  her  decision 
for — say — a  year.  I  never  knew  a  woman  to 
try  such  an  experiment  longer.  She  finds  her 
self  invariably  conspicuous — and  no  well-bred 
woman  likes  to  be  unnecessarily  conspicuous. 
For  modesty's  sake  she  must  adopt  the  extrava 
gance  of  the  moment.  Otherwise,  she  discovers 
herself  to  be  not  rational  but  "queer,"  and  her 
attempt  at  wisdom  to  be  the  worst  of  affecta 
tions.  It  may  be  ironic  that  a  woman  who  looks 
best  in  the  mode  of  the  Empress  Josephine 
should  be  forced  to  dress  en  chmoise;  but  it  is 
more  than  ironic  when  she  has  to  dress  en 
chinoise  one  year  and  en  grecque  the  next.  I 
have  once  or  twice  known  elderly  women  who 
achieved  something  like  a  fixed  costume  for 
themselves;  but  they  were  semi-invalids.  The 
consistent  costume  is,  like  the  nun's  habit,  the 
best  possible  proof  of  having  renounced  the 
world. 

And  into  what  pits  do  the  great  couturieres 
not  fall  in  the  search  for  something  "new" 
enough  to  destroy  the  eligibility  of  all  last 
year's  frocks !  I  never  knew  what  ladies  patron 
ized,  a  few  years  since,  the  London  woman 
who  invented  "emotional  dressmaking";  but  I 
can  testify  to  having  seen,  in  a  show-window  of 
one  of  the  largest  department  stores  in  Amer 
ica,  a  model  from  her — is  not  the  word 
"atelier"?  A  large  group  of  plain  women  were 
gathered,  staring  at  it.  I  joined  the  group  and 

[45] 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


read  the  legend.  The  name  of  the  dress  was 
"Passion's  Thrall."  At  least,  as  the  White 
Knight  said,  "that  was  what  the  name  was 
called."  Within  the  shop,  in  the  spirit  of  curi 
osity,  I  followed  a  similar  group  to  the 
"department"  where  such  things  live.  Again, 
the  emotional  dressmaker.  Isolated  in  a  glass 
drawing-room,  stood  two  draped  figures :  "Her 
Dear  Desire,"  and  "Afterwards."  I  could  have 
imagined  some  one's  buying  "Her  Dear  De 
sire" — it  was  of  sad-colored  chiffon.  But  I 
could  not  imagine  any  one's  buying  "After 
wards"  ;  and  it  was  inconceivable  that  the  name 
should  help  to  sell  it.  I  am  bound  to  say  that 
eventually  I  found  myself  alone  in  the  contem 
plation  of  this  sartorial  drama.  The  crowd  had 
followed  a  living  model  who  was  illustrating 
the  possibility  and  method  of  walking  in  the 
new  "Paquin  skirt."  The  gravity  of  every  one 
concerned  was  unbelievable.  Mr.  Granville 
Barker  has  done  some  admirable  satire  on 
dressmaking  in  The  Madras  House;  but  his 
third  act  is  positively  less  poignant  than  a 
reality  like  that. 

Yet  this  is  not  the  worst.  Even  if  we  said  to 
ourselves,  "Let  us  be  always — but  varyingly — 
ugly,"  we  should  not  have  phrased  our  greatest 
danger.  Our  greatest  danger  is  simply  the  loss 
of  all  standards  of  beauty  in  dress.  "Why  do 
all  the  women  walk  like  ducks  this  year?"  was 
the  question  put  to  a  friend  of  mine,  years 


DRESS  AND    THE   WOMAN 


since,  by  a  younger  brother.  He  did  not  know 
that  a  quite  new  kind  of  corset  had  suddenly, 
during  the  summer  months,  "come  in."  To 
wear  it  meant  change  of  gait  and  posture, 
eventually  actual  change  of  shape.  Yet  we  all 
wore  it — and  doubtless  went  on  praising  the 
Venus  of  Melos  as  we  did  so.  The  notion  that, 
after  we  have  learned  from  the  scientists  to 
deal  in  evolutionary  periods  of  millions  of 
years,  we  ought  not  naively  to  expect  to  alter 
the  human  form  in  a  season  or  two,  never 
occurred,  I  fancy,  to  any  of  us.  "Business  is 
business,"  men  are  credited  with  saying,  when 
invited  to  apply  abstract  laws  of  honor.  "Fash 
ion  is  fashion,"  women  would  surely  say  if 
invited  to  apply  abstract  laws  of  beauty. 

The  worst  thing  is  that  the  drapery  or  the 
trimming  that  is  lovely  and  desirable  in  our 
eyes  one  year,  is  unspeakably  offensive  to  our 
gaze  the  next.  (Consider,  for  example,  the 
chequered  history  of  fringe! — its  career  like 
that  of  a  French  Pretender.)  Fashion  has  viti 
ated  our  taste  to  that  point.  Our  welcoming 
raptures  are  as  sincere  as  our  shuddering  rejec 
tions.  There  was  a  time  when  sleeves  could 
not — I  say  it  advisedly — be  too  large.  I  re 
member  seeing  a  girl  turn  to  edge  sideways 
through  a  large  door,  for  fear  of  crushing  the 
sleeves  of  a  new  bodice.  Her  brothers  laughed; 
but  I — I  was  very  young — felt  a  pang  of  clear, 
unmitigated  envy.  I  remember  at  that  time 

[47] 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


prophecies  that  tight  sleeves  would  never  come 
in  again — they  were  so  ugly.  Yet  how  many 
times,  since  then,  have  tight  sleeves  come  in — 
and  gone  out?  While,  if  one  dared  to  make 
any  prophecy  about  the  clothes  of  the  future, 
it  would  be  that  those  'very  large  sleeves  would 
never  again  be  worn:  they  are  so  hideous. 

There  is  no  point  in  pretending  that  one  is 
superior  to  this  fluctuating  standard.  One  is 
not.  Ideally  speaking,  every  woman  should 
keep  the  language  of  fashion  and  the  language 
of  taste  rigidly  apart.  "Fashionable"  and 
"beautiful"  should  not  be  used  interchangeably. 
Theoretically,  we  all  acknowledge  the  differ 
ence;  but  it  is  another  matter  when  we  are 
faced  by  the  actual  product.  There  may  be, 
here  and  there,  a  woman  who  can  say  with 
sincerity,  "She  wore  a  hideous  thing  she  has 
just  got  from  Worth";  but  where  is  the 
woman  who  could  ingenuously  report:  "She 
had  on  a  lovely  frock  made  in  the  style  of  year 
before  last"?  I  could  not  do  it  myself;  nor,  I 
fancy,  could  you.  We  may  not  like  the  new 
mode  the  very  first  time  that  we  see  it;  we  may 
pity  before  we  endure;  but  we  end  by  embrac 
ing.  The  bravest  of  us  can  do  no  more  than 
criticize  for  its  ugliness  something  fashionable. 
When  it  comes  to  praising  for  its  beauty  some 
thing  unfashionable,  the  words  stick  in  our 
throats.  Clothes  that  are  unfashionable  simply 
do  not  look  beautiful  to  us.  Presently  they 

[48] 


DRESS  AND   THE   WOMAN 


may,  when  the  kaleidoscope  has  been  turned 
again;  but  not  now.  And  that  means  that  we 
have  given  up  a  good  deal  of  intellectual 
freedom. 

I  have  called  the  loss  of  aesthetic  standards 
our  greatest  danger.  One  would  prefer  to  think 
that  it  is.  One  likes  to  believe  that  the  "pres 
tige  value"  of  the  current  mode  is  due  to  an 
honest  if  mistaken  conviction  of  its  beauty,  not 
to  the  implications  of  income  that  both  fash 
ionable  and  unfashionable  clothes  make  so 
definitely.  It  is  pleasanter  to  say  to  one's  self 
that  the  woman  who  refuses  an  invitation  to 
dinner  because  her  best  frock  is  two  years  old 
fears  criticism  of  her  taste,  than  that  she  fears 
an  estimate  of  her  dressmaker's  bill.  The  code 
is  more  alluring.  But  even  assuming  this  to  be 
the  cause,  the  result  is  no  less  unfortunate: 
namely,  an  almost  universal  social  timidity  on 
the  part  of  unfashionably  dressed  women — by 
which  I  mean,  for  the  moment,  nothing  worse 
than  women  in  frocks  that  were  fashionable  a 
season  since.  And  that  is  a  pity. 

One  does  not,  on  the  whole,  regret  history; 
and  our  institutions  are  by  this  time  historic.  I 
offer  the  suggestion  as  one  who  is  glad,  rather 
than  sorry,  that  John  Adams  was  not  (accord 
ing  to  his  reputed  desire)  created  Duke  of 
Braintree.  But  an  hereditary  aristocracy  serves 
some  charming  minor  purposes,  one  of  them 
being,  perhaps,  the  social  countenancing  of 

[49] 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


dowdiness.  A  duchess  may  be  as  dowdy  as  she 
likes;  and  other  women  may  with  impunity  be 
the  less  smart  in  a  land  where  there  are  always 
duchesses  being  dowdy.  I  am  sufficiently  Amer 
ican,  myself,  not  really  to  admire  the  typical 
Englishwoman's  clothes.  Half  a  dozen  queer 
necklaces  and  a  perfectly  irrelevant  bit  of  lace 
pinned  on  somewhere,  do  not  atone  to  me  for 
a  faded  straw  hat  at  Christmas  and  a  skirt 
that  is  six  inches  shorter  in  front  than  in  back. 
Not  many  years  ago,  I  went,  with  the  brief 
est  possible  interval,  from  a  British  suffrage 
meeting  to  a  dress-rehearsal  at  the  Comedie 
Frangaise.  The  resulting  sensation  amounted  to 
a  shock.  "Frenchwomen  could  not  dress  like 
Englishwomen  without  conviction  of  sin,"  I 
said  to  my  companion.  "And  ought  not  to," 
was  his  firm  rejoinder.  At  the  moment,  I 
agreed  with  him.  But  there  is  something  fine, 
after  all,  in  the  attitude  of  the  woman  who, 
having  occasion  to  go  to  some  "function"  of  a 
kind  that  she  usually  avoided,  brought  out  a 
frock  from  her  ten-year-old  trousseau^  and  had 
it  furbished  up  by  a  sempstress.  The  frock,  I 
should  say,  had  passed  from  her  mother's 
trousseau  into  her  own,  having  served  for  the 
former's  presentation  at  court  on  the  occasion 
of  her  marriage.  It  may  be  that  an  untitled 
woman  could  not  have  done  it  so  debonairly. 
It  would  certainly  be  hard  for  a  good  Ameri 
can  to  follow  her  example.  But  the  very  idea 


DRESS  AND   THE   WOMAN 


brings  one  such  a  hint  of  freedom  as  it  takes — 
they  say — a  limited  monarchy  to  give. 

Sensible  people  realize  that  children  should 
not  be  overdressed,  and  a  few  schools  in  this 
country  have  adopted  the  conventual  method 
of  putting  their  pupils  into  uniforms.  But  the 
uniforms  are,  I  fear,  only  another  turn  of  the 
kaleidoscope.  I  know  that  in  one  such  school, 
at  least,  the  girls  wear  the  school  costume  all 
day,  but  dress  in  the  evening  as  variously  and 
as  elaborately  as  they  choose.  A  rule  like  that 
is  magnifique  et  pas  cher.  For  grown-ups,  there 
is  no  uniform  at  all.  The  fact  is  that  we 
are  uncomfortable  if  we  are  not  fashionably 
dressed.  No  man  understands  the  subtle  and 
complex  significance  of  the  phrase  "nothing  to 
wear" — witness  the  distressed  but  utterly  puz 
zled  expression  that  overspreads  a  man's  face 
at  the  words.  He  knows  that  his  wife  or  his 
sister  looks  charming  in  "the  blue  one,"  or 
"the  lace  one,"  or  "the  one  with  the  jet."  She 
has  looked  charming  in  it  often  enough  for 
him  at  last  to  identify  it — and  that,  unless  he 
is  an  exception  to  his  sex,  is  very  often.  He  is 
cheerfully  getting  into  his  evening  coat  for  the 
fiftieth  time.  No  wonder  he  does  not  realize 
that  some  frock  which,  the  first  time  it  was 
worn,  made  for  triumph,  should,  the  tenth 
time,  make  for  humiliation.  But  the  most 
strong-minded  woman — the  woman  who  will, 
if  necessary,  go  to  the  opera  on  a  gala  night  in 

[51] 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


a  coat  and  skirt — at  heart  exonerates  the 
woman  who  so  foolishly,  for  the  reason  men 
tioned,  stops  at  home. 

There  is  much  to  be  said,  whether  in  the 
fifteenth  century  or  the  twentieth,  for  the  aris 
tocracy  of  wealth  and  all  that  it  can  do  for 
the  community  in  which  it  prevails.  Neither 
Florence  nor  New  York,  probably,  if  con 
sulted,  would  wish,  or  would  have  wished,  to 
give  up  its  Magnificent.  But  there  are  minor 
ways  in  which  an  aristocracy  of  wealth  makes 
us  all  more  sordid.  Obviously,  in  these  condi 
tions,  one's  income  must  constitute  one's  claim 
to  distinction,  and,  obviously,  one  can  give 
mannerly  evidence  of  one's  income  only  by  the 
amount  visibly,  not  audibly,  spent.  How  more 
silently  and  more  visibly  than  by  personal 
adornment?  Is  all  this  too  trite  to  say?  It 
behooves  the  man,  for  many  reasons,  not  to 
adorn  himself — perhaps,  even,  not  in  any 
merely  personal  way  to  outshine  other  men — 
while  his  wife  may  not  only  please  herself  but 
render  his  reputation  a  positive  service  by  out 
shining  other  women.  She  makes  no  indiscreet 
disclosures  of  fact,  but  she  rustles  with  pecu 
niary  implications.  In  an  aristocracy  of  wealth, 
Paris  may  go  far  to  make  a  peeress  of  her. 

I  do  not  wish  to  imply  that  this  is  the  sole 
American  standard :  there  are  communities  in 
which  "family"  counts;  and  there  are  the 
academic  backwaters  where  strange-scaled  fish 


DRESS  AND   THE   WOMAN 


constitute  among  themselves  aristocracies  of 
intellect.  It  need  hardly  be  said  that  in  the 
latter  places  dress  counts  least  of  all.  One  may 
go  to  hear  even  the  most  distinguished  lecturer 
in  any  rag  one  has;  and  we  are  judged  rather 
by  the  obvious  intention  of  a  frock  than  by  its 
actual  achievement.  There  is  so  much  of 
Oxford  in  any  of  our  college  towns.  But  no 
one  can  deny  that  the  aristocracy  most  widely 
developed  in  America  is  that  of  wealth.  It  is 
developed  in  places  that  are  really  too  small 
to  afford  an  aristocracy  at  all.  I  myself  have 
known  women  whose  fathers  carried  dinner- 
pails  and  whose  husbands  have  never  even 
stopped  to  regret  that  their  own  education 
ended  with  the  grammar-school  course,  who 
simply  did  not  feel  that  the  shabbily  or  simply 
dressed  woman  could  be  in  their  class.  She  may 
be  descended  from  a  half  a  dozen  Signers,  and 
be  at  home  in  every  picture-gallery  in  Europe, 
but  she  is  some  one  to  whom,  socially,  they 
cannot  but  condescend. 

I  am  told  that  precisely  the  same  standards 
prevail  in  the  newer  urban  civilizations  of  Eng 
land:  it  would  seem  to  be  an  inevitable  imme 
diate  result  of  the  supremacy  of  riches.  There 
is  perhaps  no  limit  to  the  sophistication  that 
vast  wealth  can  eventually  give  to  its  own  pos 
sessors;  but  this  law  of  fashion  is  what,  con 
sciously  or  unconsciously,  they  impose  on  the 
seething  estates  beneath  them.  I  have  known 

[53] 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


tragedies  in  smallish  American  cities  that  be 
gan  and  ended  in  dress :  women  deprived  of 
their  all  too  infrequent  intellectual  and  social 
delights,  simply  because  they  could  not  bring 
themselves  to  face  an  assembly  in  which  other 
women  whose  authority  their  own  taste  could 
not  acknowledge,  knew  their  "best"  dresses  by 
heart. 

I  have  said  that  the  economic  considerations 
are  no  concern  of  mine;  nor  are  they.  Yet  it 
may  not  be  amiss  to  suggest  in  this  context 
that  the  women  who  are  responsible  for  the 
almost  unpaid  toil  of  the  slum-children  over 
"willow"  plumes  are  not  the  rich  women  who 
will  give  for  their  willow  plumes  any  price  that 
is  asked  of  them.  It  is  the  harpy  of  the  sub 
urbs,  the  frequenter  of  bargain-counters  and 
Monday  morning  "sales,"  the  woman  whose 
most  instructive  reading  is  done  among  the 
designs  and  patterns  of  the  "women's"  maga 
zines,  who  is  responsible.  From  what  one 
reads,  one  is  certainly  compelled  to  infer  that 
if  these  little  children  are  to  be  saved,  willow 
plumes  should  be  put  at  prohibitive  prices. 
"But  since  our  women  must  walk  gay,"  the 
aristocracy  that  is  rooted  in  democracy  can 
hardly  do  without  its  willow  plumes.  Fashion 
has  got  itself  into  a  position  of  such  impor 
tance  as  that.  It  is  so  terrible  a  thing  to  be 
unfashionable  that  the  vast  majority  of  women 
— and  the  vast  majority  of  women  are  not  rich 

[54] 


DRESS  AND   THE   WOMAN 


or  anything  like  it — stretch  every  nerve  to  be 
in  fashion.  They  miss,  if  they  are  not,  too 
much  that  is  legitimately  theirs.  The  require 
ment  is  irrelevant,  is  absurd;  but  it  is  made. 
They  will,  therefore,  pay  what  they  can;  but 
they  cannot  pay  much.  The  logic  is  clear.  They 
go  to  the  great  shops  to  demand  their  willow 
plumes,  and  their  Irish-lace  collars,  in  the  very 
spirit  which  took  the  Dames  de  la  Halle  to 
Versailles.  Hence  many  of  the  conditions  of 
labor  about  which  we  read  so  many  lurid 
articles.  For  demand  creates  supply. 

The  American  woman  of  moderate  income 
is  alternately  congratulated  on  her  "smartness" 
and  scolded  for  her  extravagance.  She  cannot 
very  well,  as  things  stand,  be  smart  without 
being  extravagant.  But  the  fact  that  chiefly 
gives  one  pause  is  this:  that  a  woman  cannot 
mingle  comfortably  with  her  equals  unless  she 
can  clothe  herself  each  season  in  a  way  that 
both  to  her  and  to  them  would  have  looked 
preposterous  a  twelvemonth  before.  It  has 
luckily  become,  in  the  strictest  sense,  vulgar,  to 
be  endimanchee;  but  most  people  are — by  defi 
nition — vulgar;  and  I  have  known  women, 
again,  who  stayed  at  home  from  church  be 
cause  they  could  not  so  clothe  themselves.  Not 
unadvisedly,  I  am  tempted  to  say;  for  in  one 
of  the  most  famous  churches  of  America,  I 
have  seen  the  shabbily  dressed  woman  seated, 
by  the  usher,  with  reference  solely  to  her  cos- 

[55] 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


tume;  and  I  have  heard,  too,  the  testimony  of 
other  women  of  her  kind,  turned  into  "stay- 
at-homes"  because  precisely  that  thing  they 
could  not  endure.  An  odd  battle  of  pride  with 
pride;  and  there  are  better  uses  to  put  pride  to 
than  that.  More  blatant  and  less  grim  is  the 
authentic  anecdote  recently  told  me  concerning 
a  Newport  "colonist."  She  and  her  daughter 
entered  the  church  one  Sunday  morning,  mar 
vellously  dressed  in  contrasting  shades  of  red. 
"There  will  be  no  one  else  in  our  pew  this 
morning,"  she  murmured  graciously  to  the 
usher;  "put  some  one  in  with  us,  if  you  like — 
any  one  in  white  or  black."  What  could  not 
Dean  Swift  have  done  with  that!  One  does 
not  wish  to  make  tragedy  out  of  what  is  essen 
tially  comic.  Yet  it  may  fairly  be  said  that 
comedy  has  its  rough  side,  and  that  a  comedy 
retold  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  comic 
character  himself,  would  often  make  melan 
choly  stuff.  It  would  be  possible,  over  this  mat 
ter  of  fashion,  to  shed  the  bitter  tears  of  the 
satirist 

It  is  odd  that  "dress  reform"  should  always 
have  meant  something  ugly.  There  would  be  so 
tremendous  a  chance  for  any  one  who  wished 
to  reform  dress  in  the  interest  of  beauty!  But 
the  most  amused  and  disgusted  of  us  will,  very 
likely,  forever  shrink  from  the  task.  "The  pil 
grims  were  clothed  with  such  kind  of  raiment 
as  was  diverse  from  the  raiment  of  any  that 


DRESS  AND    THE   WOMAN 


traded  in  that  fair.  The  people,  therefore,  of 
the  fair  made  a  great  gazing  upon  them :  some 
said  they  were  fools,  some  they  were  bedlams, 
and  some  they  were  outlandish  men."  There 
are  two  reasons  why  we  shall  shrink  from  it: 
we  should  have  to  begin  with  ourselves;  and 
we  should  certainly  be  called  bedlams.  But  oh, 
the  pity  of  it! 


S7l 


CAVIARE  ON  PRINCIPLE 

ONE  can  usually  either  begin  or  end  with 
Mr.  Chesterton,  though  one  can  seldom 
do  both.  "It  is  simpler  to  eat  caviare  on 
impulse  than  to  eat  grape-nuts  on  principle,"  he 
says,  in  one  of  his  intervals  of  pure  lucidity.  I 
should  like  to  make  a  Chestertonian  transposi 
tion,  and  pronounce  that  it  is  better  (I  do  not 
say  simpler)  to  eat  caviare  on  principle  than  to 
eat  grape-nuts  on  impulse.  The  fact  is  that  the 
modern  fad  of  simplicity  for  its  own  sake  has 
ceased  to  be  merely  ridiculous;  it  has  become 
dangerous.  May  not  some  of  us  lift  our  voices 
against  it? 

I  have  no  right,  I  suppose,  to  ally,  in  my 
own  mind,  socialists  and  vegetarians.  But  I 
nearly  always  find,  when  I  ask  a  vegetarian  if 
he  is  a  socialist,  or  a  socialist  if  he  is  a  vege 
tarian,  that  the  answer  is  in  the  affirmative.  I 
am  sure  that  they,  on  their  side,  confuse  snobs 
with  meat-eaters.  One  could  forgive  them, 
were  they  more  bitterly  logical.  For  my  own 
part,  I  should  be  quite  willing  to  go  the  length 
of  all  Hinduism  and  say  that  rice  itself  has  a 
soul.  I  can  even  see  myself  joining  a  "move 
ment"  for  giving  the  vote  to  violets  and  dis 
franchising  orchids.  This,  however,  is  not  their 

[58] 


CAVIARE  ON  PRINCIPLE 


desire.  They  do  not  wish  to  make  even  the  ox 
a  citizen — only  a  brother;  and  I  have  never 
discovered  that  vegetarians — even  when  they 
were  "hygienic,"  not  "sentimental,"  ones — 
were  anxious  to  reproduce  the  history  of  the 
rice-fed  peoples.  But  let  their  logic  take  care 
of  itself.  My  point  is  really  that  socialists  and 
vegetarians  are  banded  together  to  fight  for 
the  simplifying  of  life.  Socialism,  of  course, 
organizes  as  furiously  as  Capital  itself;  and  I 
leave  it  to  any  one  if  a  nut-cutlet  is  not  compli 
cated  to  the  point  of  mendacity.  But  ostensibly 
both  sects  are  on  the  side  of  Procrustes  against 
human  vagaries.  Both  would  surely  consider 
caviare  immoral;  either  because  no  one  ought 
to  eat  it,  or  because  every  one  cannot.  It  does 
not  much  matter,  I  fancy,  which  point  you 
make  against  the  dried  roe  of  the  sturgeon. 
My  own  plea  for  caviare  rests  precisely  on 
the  fact  that  it  is  not,  and  cannot  be,  thrust 
into  every  one's  mouth.  It  is  not  simple,  no. 
The  only  really  "simple"  food-stuff  is  manna. 
Imagine,  for  example,  calling  anything  simple 
that  has  to  be  shot  out  of  a  cannon  by  way  of 
preparation.  In  point  of  fact,  very  few  people 
eat  caviare  save  on  impulse, — otherwise,  they 
find  it  too  nasty.  But  it  is  an  impulse  worthy  of 
being  dogmatized;  of  becoming  a  principle. 

Simplicity  is  an  acquired  taste.  Mankind, 
left  free,  instinctively  complicates  life.  The 
hardest  command  to  follow  has  always  been 

[59] 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


that  which  bids  us  take  no  thought  for  the 
morrow.  Perhaps  that  is  what  Mr.  Chesterton 
means  when  he  talks  of  the  difficulty  of  eating 
grape-nuts  on  principle.  The  real  drawback  to 
"the  simple  life"  is  that  it  is  not  simple.  If  you 
are  living  it,  you  positively  can  do  nothing  else. 
There  is  not  time.  For  the  simple  life  demands 
virtually  that  there  shall  be  no  specialization. 
The  Hausfrau  who  is  living  the  simple  life 
must,  after  all,  sweep,  scour,  wash,  and  mend. 
She  must  also  cook;  from  that,  even  Battle 
Creek  cannot  save  her.  She  may  drearn  sternly 
of  Margaret  Fuller,  who  read  Plato  while  she 
pared  apples;  but  in  her  secret  heart  she  knows 
that  either  Plato  or  the  apples  suffered.  And 
from  what  point  of  view  is  it  simpler  to  have  a 
maid-of-all-work  than  to  indulge  one's  self  in 
liveried  lackeys?  Not,  obviously,  for  the  mis 
tress  ;  and  it  is  surely  simpler  to  be  an  adequate 
second  footman  than  to  be  an  adequate  bonne- 
a-tout-faire.  We  should  really  simplify  life  by 
having  more  servants  rather  than  fewer; 
more  luxury  instead  of  less.  The  smoothest 
machinery  is  the  most  complicated;  and  which 
of  us  wants  to  sink  the  Mauretania  and  go 
back  to  Robert  Fulton's  steamboat?  One  would 
think  that  the  decision  would  be  made  naturally 
for  one  by  one's  income.  But  it  is  the  triumph 
of  the  new  paradox  that  this  is  not  so.  Thou 
sands*  of  people  seem  to  be  infected  with  the 
idea  that  by  doing  more  themselves  they 

[60] 


CAVIARE  ON  PRINCIPLE 


bestow  leisure  on  others;  that  by  wearing 
shabby  clothes  they  somehow  make  it  possible 
for  others  to  dress  better — though  they  thus 
admit  tacitly  that  leisure  and  elegance  are  not 
evil  things.  Or  perhaps — though  Heaven  for 
bid  they  should  be  right! — they  merely  think 
that  by  refusing  nightingales'  tongues,  they 
make  every  one  more  content  with  porridge. 
Let  us  be  gallant  about  the  porridge  that  we 
must  eat,  but  let  us  never  forget  that  there  are 
better  things  to  eat  than  porridge. 

And  all  time  past,  was  it  all  for  this  ? 
Times  unforgotten,  and  treasures  of  things  ? 

What  is  the  use  of  throwing  great  museums 
open  to  the  people,  if  you  tell  them  at  the 
same  time  that  to  possess  the  contents  of  the 
museums  would  not  make  a  private  person 
happier?  Why  should  there  be  cordons  bleus 
in  the  world,  if  we  ought  to  live  on  bread  and 
milk?  Above  all,  why  have  we  praised,  through 
the  centuries,  all  the  slow  processes,  the  tardy 
consummations,  of  perfection,  if  raw  material, 
either  in  art  or  life,  is  really  best?  I  recall  at 
this  instant  a  friend  of  mine  who  expresses  her 
democracy  in  her  footwear.  Her  frocks  are  as 
charming  as  money  can  induce  Paquin  to  make 
them;  but  if  her  frocks  are  an  insult  to  the 
poor,  her  boots  are  an  insult  to  the  rich.  I 
have  seen  her  walk  to  a  garden-party,  in  real 
lace,  and  out  at  heel.  She  fancied,  I  think,  that 
[61] 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


her  inadequate  boots  obliterated  the  deplorable 
social  distinction  between  herself  and  her  cook. 
In  point  of  fact,  her  cook  would  not  have  con 
descended  to  them;  would  not  have  considered 
herself  a  "lady"  if  she  had. 

I  have  other  friends  who  feel  strongly  the 
ignominy  of  personal  service :  who  agree  with 
many  ignorant  young  women  that  it  is  more 
dignified  to  be  a  bullied,  insulted,  underpaid 
shop-girl  with  a  rhinestone  sunburst,  than  a 
well-paid,  highly-respected  parlor-maid  in  a 
uniform.  Accordingly,  they  conscientiously  de 
prive  themselves  of  the  parlor-maid,  and  spend 
her  wages  in  trying  to  get  a  vote  for  the  shop 
girl.  I  do  not  understand  their  distinctions  in 
liberty,  or  their  definition  of  degradation.  The 
parlor-maid  at  least  can  choose  the  mistress, 
but  the  shop-girl  cannot  choose  the  floor 
walker. 

I  am,  myself,  essentially  an  undomestic 
woman,  and  I  dislike  the  parlor-maid's  tasks 
to  the  point  of  feeling  excessive  irritation  at 
having,  occasionally,  in  this  mad  world,  to 
perform  them.  But,  seriously  speaking,  apart 
from  the  temperamental  quirk,  I  would  don 
her  clothes  and  follow  officially  her  career, 
rather  than  that  parlor-maids  in  uniforms 
should  pass  wholly  from  the  world.  It  is  as  if 
these  people  said,  "Since  those  who  are  parlor 
maids  themselves  cannot  very  well  employ 
parlor-maids,  then  let  no  one  have  a  parlor- 
[62! 


CAVIARE  ON  PRINCIPLE 


maid."  Their  factitious  altruism,  with  all  its 
peril,  might  be  forgiven  them;  but  the  mis 
guided  creatures  (who  are  human  beings  and 
egotists,  after  all,  and  as  such  must  "save  their 
face")  go  on  to  say  that  it  is  really  much  nicer 
not  to  have  parlor-maids.  And  that  lie  is  un 
pardonable,  for  it  strikes  at  the  root  of  human 
experience.  Parlor-maids  would  never  have 
become  a  convention  if  they  had  not  been 
found  desirable. 

Are  we  really,  at  this  late  day,  going  to  be 
duped  by  the  mid-century  fallacy  that  "plain 
living  and  high  thinking"  are  a  natural  combi 
nation?  Even  if  Shakespeare  at  New  Place 
teaches  us  nothing,  we  cannot  fail  to  be  im 
pressed  by  the  memory  of  Thoreau,  stealing 
home  from  Lake  Walden  by  dark,  to  provide 
himself  secretly  with  better  fare  than  the  woods 
afforded,  As  if,  indeed,  any  one  who  had  tried 
plain  living  did  not  know  that  high  thinking 
was  done,  if  at  all,  in  spite  of  it!  "The  hand  of 
little  employment  hath  the  daintier  sense,"  as 
Shakespeare  long  since  said.  Let  us  open  our 
own  front  doors,  polish  our  own  shoes,  dust 
our  own  bibelots,  and  make  messes  on  a  chafing- 
dish  when  the  cook  is  out ;  and  let  us  do  it  gal 
lantly.  But  let  us  not  pretend  that  it  is  more 
civilized  to  do  these  things  ourselves  than  to 
have  them  skilfully  done  for  us.  The  prince  in 
disguise  makes  the  most  charming  beggar  in 
the  world,  no  doubt ;  but  that  is  because — as  all 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


fairy-tales  from  the  beginning  of  time  have 
taught  us — the  prince  wears  his  rags  as  if  they 
were  purple.  And,  to  do  that,  he  not  only  must 
once  have  worn  purple,  but  must  never  forget 
the  purple  that  he  has  worn.  And  to  the  argu 
ment  that  all  cannot  wear  purple,  I  can,  as  I 
say,  only  reply  that  that  seems  to  me  to  be  no 
reason  why  all  should  wear  rags. 

Until  every  one  is  too  good  to  be  a  parlor 
maid,  let  us  open  our  own  doors,  if  we  must — 
provided  we  do  it  according  to  the  great  tradi 
tion  of  door-opening;  but  how  can  we  do  it 
according  to  the  great  tradition  if  we  abolish 
parlor-maids  and  dry  up  the  fount  of  the  great 
tradition?  And,  whatever  the  simplifiers  say, 
there  is  no  doubt  that,  as  yet,  there  are,  to  one 
person  who  is  too  good  for  door-opening,  ten 
persons  who  are  by  no  means  good  enough  for 
it.  I  have  never  been  able  to  imagine  just  how 
the  sound  of  the  Last  Trump  is  going  to  shiver 
the  aristocracy  of  earth  into  the  democracy  of 
Heaven.  To  be  sure,  it  is  not  my  affair.  But  at 
least  one  can  have,  this  side  the  grave,  little 
patience  with  the  altruisms  of  the  Procrust- 
eans.  They  merely  wish  to  make  each  of  us  an 
incompetent  Jack-at-all-trades.  And  one  had 
thought  the  German  universities,  if  they  had 
done  nothing  else,  had  blown  that  bubble ! 

A  friend  of  mine  asked  me  the  other  day  if 
I  did  not  feel  degraded  to  be  at  the  mercy  of 
servants;  humiliated  by  knowing  that  they 


CAVIARE  ON  PRINCIPLE 


could  perform  domestic  tasks  better  than  I,  and 
could  take  advantage  of  that  fact.  I  confess  it 
had  never  occurred  to  me.  If  my  cook  felt 
degraded  by  being  unable  to  talk  French,  I 
should  think  her  a  silly  snob.  Are  we  not  all, 
economically,  at  one  another's  mercy?  Of  what 
does  enthusiastic  living  of  the  "simple"  life 
make  us  independent,  save  of  a  few  hard- 
learned  and  precious  lessons  of  taste?  The 
successful  housewife  is  the  one  who  has  suc 
ceeded  in  imitating  perfectly  several  trained 
servants.  But  the  criterion  is  still  the  trained 
servant.  The  distinguished  beggar  is  the  one 
who  wears  his  rags  as  if  they  were  purple.  But, 
to  appreciate  him,  we  must  know  the  look  of 
purple  rightly  worn.  The  admirable  vegetarian 
eats  his  shredded  wheat  as  if  it  were  caviare. 
But  where  would  be  the  beauty  of  his  perform 
ance  were  not  someone,  somewhere,  eating 
caviare  as  if  it  were  shredded  wheat? 


THE  EXTIRPATION  OF  CULTURE 

IT  is  odd  how  words  recur.  There  has  been 
more  talk  about  culture,  among  educated 
people  in  America,  during  the  last  months, 
than  there  had  been  for  years.  To  be  sure,  the 
culture  discussed  since  August,  1914,  has  been 
German  Kultur;  but  that  does  not  matter.  We 
have  actually  been  talking  about  culture  once 
more;  rehabilitating  it,  if  only  for  the  sake  of 
denying  that  the  Germans,  by  and  large,  have  a 
monopoly  of  anything  so  good.  To  some  of  us, 
this  recurrence  of  a  word  so  long  tabu  is  wel 
come — and  as  side-splittingly  funny  as  it  is 
welcome.  For  the  fact  is  that  for  twenty  years 
— ever  since  Matthew  Arnold  went  out  of 
fashion — to  speak  of  culture  has  meant  that 
one  did  not  have  it.  The  only  people  who  have 
talked  about  it  have  been  the  people  who  have 
thought  you  could  get  it  at  Chautauquas.  To 
use  the  word  damned  you  in  the  eyes  of  the 
knowing.  Now  I  have  always,  privately  and 
humbly,  thought  it  a  pity  that  so  good  a  word 
should  go  out  of  the  best  vocabularies;  for 
when  you  lose  an  abstract  term,  you  are  very 
apt  to  lose  the  thing  it  stands  for.  Indeed,  it 
has  seemed  only  too  clear  that  we  were  doing 
all  in  our  power  to  lose  both  the  word  and  the 
[66] 


THE  EXTIRPATION  OF  CULTURE 

thing.  I  fancy  we  ought  to  be  grateful  to  the 
Germans  for  getting  "culture"  on  to  all  the 
editorial  pages  of  the  country;  though  I  admit 
it  sometimes  seems  as  if  the  Germans  bore  out 
the  rule  that  only  those  people  talk  about  it 
who  have  it  not.  I  should  really  like  to  make  a 
plea  for  the  temporary  reversal  of  the  rule. 
Indeed,  I  think  we  are  getting  to  a  point  where 
we  are  so  little  "cultured"  that  we  can  really 
afford  to  talk  about  it.  When  the  plutocrat 
goes  bankrupt,  he  may  once  more,  with  de 
cency,  mention  the  prices  of  things.  Culture  has 
ceased  to  be  a  passionate  American  preoccupa 
tion.  Perhaps  we  shall  not  offend  modesty  if 
we  use  the  word  once  more. 

Now  there  are  some  who,  believing  that  all 
is  for  the  best  in  the  best  of  possible  worlds, 
and  that  to-morrow  is  necessarily  better  than 
to-day,  may  think  that  if  culture  is  a  good  thing 
we  shall  infallibly  be  found  to  have  more  of  it 
than  we  had  a  generation  since ;  and  that  if  we 
can  be  shown  not  to  have  more  of  it,  it  can  be 
shown  not  to  be  worth  seeking.  Having,  my 
self,  a  congenital  case  of  agoraphobia,  I 
habitually  say  nothing  to  the  professional 
optimists  in  the  public  square.  The  wilderness 
is  a  good  place  to  cry  in;  the  echoes  are 
magnificent.  So  I  shall  not  attempt  to  deprive 
any  one  of  Candide's  happy  conviction.  If  any 
person  is  kind  enough  to  listen,  I  will  simply 
ask  him  to  contemplate  a  few  facts  with  me. 

[67] 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


No  one  will  be  too  optimistic,  I  fancy,  to  grant 
that  there  are  proportionally  fewer  Americans 
who  care  about  culture — and  who  know  the 
real  thing  when  they  see  it — than  there  were 
one  or  two  generations  ago.  Contact  with  "the 
best  that  has  been  thought  and  said  in  the 
world"  is  not  desired  by  so  large  a  proportion 
of  the  community  as  it  was.  That  there  are 
new  and  parvenu  branches  of  learning,  furi 
ously  followed,  I,  on  my  part,  shall  not  attempt 
to  deny.  But  culture  is  another  matter.  Perhaps 
the  sociologists  can  show  that  this  is  a  good 
thing.  I  do  not  ask  any  one  to  deplore  any 
thing.  I  only  ask  the  well-disposed  to  examine 
the  change  that  has  come  over  the  spirit  of 
our  American  dream. 

If  I  were  asked  to  give,  off  hand,  the  causes 
of  the  gradual  extirpation  of  culture  among  us, 
I  should  name  the  following: 

1.  The  increased  hold  of  the  democratic  fal 
lacy  on  the  public  mind. 

2.  The  influx  of  a  racially  and  socially  in 
ferior  population. 

3.  Materialism  in  all  classes. 

4.  The  idolatry  of  science. 

Only  one  of  these  is  purely  intellectual;  two 
might  almost  be  called  political.  In  point  of 
fact,  all  four  are  interwoven. 

I  should  be  insultingly  trite  if  I  proceeded 
here  to  expound  the  fallacy  of  the  historic 
statement  that  all  men  are  born  free  and  equal. 

[68] 


THE  EXTIRPATION  OF  CULTURE 

We  have  all  known  for  a  long  time  that  indi 
vidual  freedom  and  individual  equality  cannot 
co-exist.  I  dare  say  no  one  since  Thomas  Jeffer 
son  (and  may  I  express  my  doubts  even  of  that 
inspired  charlatan?)  has  really  believed  it.  No 
one  could  believe  it  at  the  present  day  except 
the  people  who  are  flattered  by  it;  and  of  people 
who  are  flattered  by  it,  it  is  obviously  not  true. 
The  democracy  of  the  present  day — like  the 
aristocracy  of  another  day — is  fostered  by  the 
people  whom  it  advantages;  and  the  people 
whom  it  advantages  are  adding  themselves,  at 
the  rate  of  a  million  a  year,  to  our  census  lists. 
When  even  democracy  has  to  reckon  with  the 
fact  that  its  premises  are  all  wrong,  and  that 
men  are  not  born  equal — that  hierarchies  are 
inherent  in  human  kind  regardless  of  birth  or 
opportunity — it  proceeds  to  do  its  utmost  to 
equalize  artificially;  it  becomes  Procrustes. 
But  will  any  one  contend  that  Procrustes  left 
people  free? 

Now,  what  has  this  to  do  with  culture? 
Simply  this:  that  culture  is  not  a  democratic 
achievement,  because  culture  is  inherently  snob 
bish.  Contact  with  "the  best  that  has  been 
thought  and  said  in  the  world"  makes  people 
intellectually  exclusive,  and  makes  them  draw 
distinctions.  Those  distinctions,  seriously  speak 
ing,  are  not  founded  on  social  origins  or  great 
possessions;  they  are  founded  on  states  of  mind. 
So  long  as  democracy  is  simply  a  political  mat- 

[69] 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


ter,  culture  is  left  free  to  select  its  groups  and 
proclaim  its  hierarchies.  But  it  is  characteristic 
of  our  democracy  that  political  equality  has 
not  sufficed  to  it;  the  "I  am  as  good  as  you 
are"  formula  has  been  flung  out  to  every  hori 
zon.  The  people  with  whom  it  has  become  a 
mania  insist  that  their  equality  with  every  one 
else  in  their  range  of  vision  is  a  moral,  an  in 
tellectual,  a  social,  as  well  as  a  political,  equality. 
Let  that  formula  prevail,  and  culture,  with  its 
eternal  distinction-drawing,  will  naturally  die. 
For  contact  with  the  best  that  has  been  thought 
and  said  in  the  world  induces  a  mighty  humility 
— and  a  mighty  scorn  of  those  who  do  not 
know  enough  to  be  humble  before  the  Masters. 
They  are  an  impersonal  humility  and  an  imper 
sonal  scorn — attitudes  of  the  mind,  both,  not 
of  the  heart.  But  humility  and  scorn  are 
both  ruled,  theoretically,  out  of  the  democratic 
court. 

The  pure-bred  American  once  cared  for  cul 
ture,  and  no  longer — to  the  same  extent,  at 
least — does.  If  any  one  asks  why  America  (I 
use  the  word  loosely,  as  meaning  our  United 
States),  having  always,  since  the  Revolution, 
been  a  democracy,  can  have  cared  for  so  un 
democratic  a  thing,  the  answer  is  simple.  The 
democracy  of  our  forefathers  was  a  purely 
pragmatic  affair.  The  Declaration  of  Inde 
pendence  was  framed  by  men  living  in  a  world 
where  it  was  almost  true  enough  to  be  work 
able.  Roughly  speaking,  in  pioneer  and  colonial 

[70] 


THE  EXTIRPATION  OF  CULTURE 

days — wherever  and  whoever  the  pioneers  and 
colonists  may  be — the  community  is  a  democ 
racy  because  it  is  an  aristocracy.  In  those 
grimmer  worlds,  the  fittest  do  survive  because 
there  is  no  incubator  process  to  keep  the  feeble 
going.  A  pioneer  and  colonial  group,  more 
over,  is  apt  to  be  like-minded;  people  do  not 
exile  themselves  in  each  other's  company  unless 
they  want  the  same  things.  Minor  differences 
of  opinion  are  swallowed  up  in  like  major 
needs :  you  form  coalition  governments  against 
savages  and  famine  or  a  specially  detested 
tyranny.  In  the  modern  "I  am  as  good  as  you 
are"  sense,  our  ancestors  were  not  democratic 
at  all.  They  were  democratic  for  their  own 
special  group,  and  a  pragmatic  truth  misled 
them — as,  because  we  admire  them,  we  are 
permitting  it  to  mislead  us.  They  were  Brah- 
minical  in  their  attitude  to  learning;  they 
thought  it  supremely  valuable,  and  they  did  not 
believe  in — no  Brahmin  wants  to  believe  in — a 
royal  road  to  it,  any  more  than  they  believed 
in  a  royal  road  to  the  salvation  of  the  soul. 
They  believed  in  intellectual,  as  much  as  they 
did  in  spiritual,  election;  and  they  certainly  did 
not  think  that  politics  could  influence  either. 
Up  to  the  last  generation  or  two,  they  looked 
upon  the  cultured  man  as  a  peculiarly  favored 
person;  and  because  culture  (unlike  beauty,  let 
us  say)  depended  to  some  extent  on  the  effort 
of  the  individual,  they  thought  it  fit  to  mention. 
Now  there  is  this  about  a  pragmatic  truth: 

[71] 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


like  any  other  invention  of  the  devil,  it 
smooths  the  road  for  the  lazy.  If  it  did  not 
smooth  the  road,  it  would  not  be,  by  pragmatic 
definition,  truth.  And  the  great  bulk  of  us  have 
found  the  "free  and  equal"  statement  such  a 
help  that,  though  we  cannot  pretend  for  a 
moment  that  it  is  true,  we  stick  to  it.  The 
schoolboy  sticks  to  it  because  it  greases  his 
oratory;  the  politician  sticks  to  it  because  his 
constituents  like  the  sound  of  it;  the  detrimen 
tal  sticks  to  it  because  it  is  his  only  apology. 
And,  just  as  you  cannot  suppress  a  word  with 
out  eventually  suppressing  the  thing  it  stands 
for,  so  you  cannot  utter  a  statement  forever 
without  imbibing  some  of  its  poison.  Even  as 
our  reasonable  national  pride  turned  into  the 
spread-eagleism  that  Dickens  and  Mrs.  Trol- 
lope  caricatured,  so  the  "free  and  equal"  shib 
boleth  turned  into  the  "I  am  as  good  as  you 
are"  formula.  Why  trouble  about  anything,  if 
you  were  already  lord  of  the  world?  At  first, 
it  was  Europe  we  defied.  What  were  the  an 
cient  oligarchies,  to  impose  on  us  their  stan 
dards,  intellectual,  social,  or  moral?  We  set 
up  our  own  standards,  because  we  were  as 
good  as  any  one  else — and  also  because  it  was 
a  little  easier. 

Let  me  say  before  going  further,  that  I  am 
not  blaming  the  lower  classes  alone  for  the 
extirpation  of  culture  among  us.  The  upper 
classes  are  equally  responsible — if,  indeed,  not 

[72] 


THE  EXTIRPATION  OF  CULTURE 

even  more  to  blame.  We  have  become  materi 
alistic:  our  very  virtues  are  more  materialistic 
than  they  were.  It  is  forgivable  in  the  poor 
man  to  be  materialistic;  for  unless  he  has 
bread  to  keep  his  body  alive,  he  will  presently 
have  no  soul  to  cherish.  Materialism  is  less 
pardonable  in  the  man  who  always  knows  where 
his  next  meal  is  coming  from.  He,  if  you  like, 
does  have  time  to  worry  about  his  soul.  None 
the  less,  he  worries  about  it  very  little.  There 
used  to  be  a  good  deal  of  fun  poked  at  settle 
ment-workers  who  tried  to  read  Dante  and 
Shakespeare  to  slum-dwellers.  I  am  not  sure 
that  those  misguided  youths  and  maidens  who 
first  carried  Dante  and  Shakespeare  into  the 
slums  were  not  right  as  to  substance,  however 
wrong  they  were  as  to  sequence.  The  only 
morally  decent  excuse  for  wanting  to  have  a 
little  more  money  than  you  actually  need  to 
feed  and  clothe  your  family,  is  your  ambition 
to  have  a  little  mental  energy  to  spend  on 
things  not  of  the  body.  The  ultimate  tragedy 
of  the  slums  is  that,  in  slum  conditions,  one 
can  scarcely  think,  from  birth  to  death,  of  any 
thing  but  the  body.  The  upper-class  people 
who  think  of  pleasing  their  palates  instead  of 
relieving  hunger,  of  being  in  the  fashion  in 
stead  of  covering  their  nakedness,  are  no  more 
civilized  than  the  slum-dwellers.  They  are  apt, 
it  is  true,  to  become  more  so ;  for  it  is  a  strange 
fact  that  a  family  can  seldom  be  rich  through 

[73] 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


several  generations  without  discovering  some 
aesthetic  truths.  And  aesthetic  truths  lead  to 
moral  perceptions.  You  cannot  with  impunity 
fill  your  ears  with  good  music,  your  eyes  with 
good  painting  and  sculpture  and  architecture. 
Something  happens  to  you,  after  a  time,  no 
matter  how  vulgar  you  may  be.  But  wealth  is 
very  fluctuating  in  our  country;  and  several  gen 
erations  of  it  are  not  often  seen.  The  people 
who  are  now  rich  are  generally  people  whose 
grandfathers  and  great-grandfathers  were  fight 
ing  for  sheer  existence.  So  we  have  the  spectacle 
of  the  dominant  plutocrats  (no  one  will  deny 
that  plutocracy  is  the  order  of  the  day,  both 
here  and  in  Europe)  either  mindful  them 
selves  of  the  struggle  for  existence,  or  in  a 
state  of  having  only  just  forgotten  it.  They  are 
not  going  to  push  their  children  into  a  race  for 
intangible  goods.  And  the  more  we  recruit 
from  immigrants  who  bring  no  personal  tradi 
tions  with  them,  the  more  America  is  going  to 
ignore  the  things  of  the  spirit.  No  one  whose 
consuming  desire  is  either  for  food  or  for 
motor-cars  is  going  to  care  about  culture,  or 
even  know  what  it  is.  And  it  is  another  mis 
fortune  of  our  over-quickened  social  evolution 
that  the  middle  classes  do  not  stay  middle- 
class.  They  climb  to  wealth,  or  sink  to  indi 
gence.  Neither  that  quick  rise  nor  that  quick 
fall  is  a  period  in  which  to  cherish  their  own 
or  their  children's  intellects. 

[74] 


THE  EXTIRPATION  OF  CULTURE 

Both  from  above  and  below,  then,  our  col 
leges  and  schools  have  felt  the  hostile  pressure. 
Colleges  are,  on  the  one  hand,  jeered  at  for 
doing  their  business  badly,  and,  on  the  other, 
accused  of  being  too  difficult.  We  are  always 
hearing  that  college  is  of  no  earthly  use  to  a 
man  except  as  he  learns  there  to  rub  up  against 
other  men.  We  are  always  hearing,  also,  that 
the  college  curriculum  is  a  cruel  strain  on  the 
average  boy  or  girl.  On  one  score  or  another, 
the  colleges  are  always  being  attacked ;  and  the 
attack  usually  includes  the  hint  that  the  real 
test  of  a  "college  education"  is  not  the  intrinsic 
value,  but  its  success  or  failure  in  preparing 
the  youth  for  something  that  has  nothing  to 
do  with  learning.  Will  it  be  of  social  or  finan 
cial  use  to  him?  If  not,  why  make  sacrifices  to 
get  it?  Far  be  it  from  me  to  assert  that  the 
intellectual  flame  never  burns  in  the  breast  of 
collegiate  youth!  But  I  do  believe  it  provable 
that  there  is  far  less  tendency  to  regard  learn 
ing  as  a  good  in  itself,  and  far  more  tendency 
to  cheat  scholarship,  if  possible,  in  the  interest 
of  some  other  thing  held  good,  than  there  was 
two  generations  ago.  Ignorance  of  what  real 
learning  is,  and  a  consequent  suspicion  of  it; 
materialism,  and  a  consequent  intellectual  lax 
ity — both  of  these  have  done  destructive  work 
in  the  colleges. 

The  education  of  younger  children  is  in  like 
case.  We  put  them  into  kindergartens  where 

[75] 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


their  reasoning  powers  are  ruined;  or,  if  we 
can  afford  it,  we  buy  Montessori  outfits  that 
were  invented  for  semi-imbeciles  in  Italian 
slums ;  or  we  send  them  to  outdoor  schools  and 
give  them  prizes  for  sleeping.  Every  one 
knows  what  a  fight  the  old  universities  have 
had  to  put  up  to  keep  their  entrance  standards 
at  all.  With  the  great  new  army  of  state  uni 
versities  admitting  students  from  the  public 
schools  without  examination,  because  they 
themselves  are  part  of  the  big  public-school 
system,  how  can  it  be  otherwise? 

Now  the  patriotic  American  may  see — and 
rightly  enough — in  the  public-school  system 
which  includes  a  college  training,  a  relic  of  the 
desperate  desire  of  our  forefathers  that  educa 
tion,  as  a  major  good,  should  be  within  the 
reach  of  all  and  sundry.  But  even  the  patriotic 
American  must  see  another  impulse  at  work: 
the  impulse  to  put  the  college  intellectually,  as 
well  as  financially,  within  the  reach  of  all.  The 
colleges  must  not  set  up  standards  for  them 
selves  that  the  average  boy  or  girl,  from  the 
ordinary  school,  cannot  reach  without  difficulty, 
because  that  is  undemocratic. 

Now  I  know  as  well  as  other  people  that  it 
is  positively  harder  to  get  into  our  old  universi 
ties  to-day  than  it  was  in  our  fathers'  day.  But 
granted  the  enormously  increased  facilities  for 
preparation  all  over  the  land,  it  is  not  rela 
tively  anything  like  so  hard.  Certainly,  once  in, 

[76] 


THE  EXTIRPATION  OF  CULTURE 

it  is  possible  to  get  through  the  college  course 
with  less  work  than  ever  before.  In  the  first 
place,  there  is  a  much  wider  choice  of  subjects 
on  which  a  boy  can  get  his  degree:  his  tastes 
are  consulted  as  they  never  used  to  be*  If  he 
does  not  want  to  endure  the  discipline  of 
Greek,  he  can  get  an  A.B.  at  every  college  in 
the  country — except  Princeton — without  know 
ing  a  word  of  Greek.  Even  at  Princeton,  he 
can  take  a  Litt.B.  and  let  Greek  forever  alone.* 
He  can  study  sociology,  or  Spanish,  or  physical 
culture,  or  nearly  anything  he  likes.  I  have 
even  heard  that  in  one  of  our  state  universities 
there  is  a  department  of  hat-trimming,  which 
contributes  its  quota  to  the  courses  for  a  (pre 
sumably  feminine)  academic  degree. 

It  may  be  objected  at  this  point  that  the 
fluctuations  of  colleges  have  nothing  to  do  with 
our  standards  of  culture.  I  think  they  have,  a 
great  deal.  No  one  will  deny  that  culture  can 
be  got  elsewhere,  or  that  colleges  do  not  suffice 
in  themselves  to  give  it.  But  if  colleges  do 
not  consider  themselves  custodians  of  culture, 
warders  and  cherishers  of  the  flame,  they  have 
no  reason  for  existence.  It  is  a  platitude  that 

*  I  have  been  told,  since  writing  this  essay,  that  the  Univer 
sity  of  Chicago  demands  a  modicum  of  Greek  for  the  A.  B.  de 
gree.  The  Catholic  University  does  the  same.  And  it  is  only 
fair  to  say,  also,  that,  since  this  essay  was  written,  Princeton  has 
abdicated  her  well-nigh  unique  position.  It  will  hereafter  be 
possible  to  acquire  the  Princeton  A.  B.  without  knowing  alpha 
from  omega. 

[77] 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


business  men  consider  college  a  worthless  pre 
paration  for  business  life — save  as  a  young 
man  may  have  laid  up  there  treasure  for  him 
self  in  the  shape  of  valuable  "connections." 
Even  the  conception  of  college  as  a  four  years' 
paradise  intervening  before  the  hell  of  an 
active  struggle  for  existence,  does  not  touch 
upon  the  original  reason  for  universities'  being 
at  all.  Universities  were  invented  for  the  sake 
of  bringing  their  fortunate  students  into  con 
tact  with  the  precious  lore  of  the  world,  there 
garnered  and  kept  pure.  There  was  no  idea  on 
the  part  of  their  founders  that  every  one 
would  or  could  partake  of  academic  benefits. 
The  social  scheme  would  not  originally  have 
allowed  that;  still  less  would  the  conception  of 
the  public  intellect  have  admitted  the  notion. 
Every  one  was  not  supposed  to  be  congenitally 
qualified  for  intimacy  with  the  best  that  has 
been  thought  and  said  in  the  world.  They  had 
no  notion,  until  very  recently,  of  so  changing 
the  terms  of  that  intimacy  that  every  one 
might  think  he  could  have  it.  Learning,  culture, 
were  not  to  be  adulterated  so  that  any  mental 
digestive  process  whatsoever  could  take  them 
in. 

But  now,  in  America,  there  is  a  tendency 
that  way.  If  a  boy  does  not  feel  a  pre-estab 
lished  harmony  between  his  soul  and  the  hu 
manities,  then  give  him  an  academic  degree  on 
something  with  which  his  soul  will  be  in  pre- 

[78] 


THE  EXTIRPATION  OF   CULTURE 

established  harmony.  And  if  there  is  no  pre- 
established  harmony  between  his  soul  and  any 
form  of  learning,  then  create  institutions  that 
will  give  him  a  degree  with  no  learning  to 
speak  of  at  all.  I  do  not  mean  to  deny  that 
many  of  our  virtually  valueless  colleges  were 
founded  in  the  pathetic  inherited  conviction 
that  learning  and  culture  were  too  great  goods 
not  to  be  accessible  to  all  who  cared  passion 
ately  for  them.  But  I  do  believe  that  the  rever 
ence  for  learning  and  culture  has  been  largely 
replaced  by  a  conviction  that  anything  which 
has  so  great  a  reputation  as  a  college  degree 
must  be  put  within  the  reach  of  all,  even  at  the 
risk  of  making  its  reputation  a  farce.  The 
privileged  have  been  unwilling  that  their  chil 
dren  should  be  made  to  work ;  the  unprivileged 
have  been  unwilling  that  their  children  should 
see  anything  of  good  repute,  anything  with  a 
prestige  value,  denied  to  them.  We  have  all 
demanded  a  royal  road  to  a  thing  to  which 
there  is  no  royal  road.  The  expensive  schools 
lead  their  pupils  from  kindergarten  to  nature- 
study  and  eurhythmies,  with  basket-work  and 
gymnastics  thrown  in ;  the  public  schools  follow 
them  as  closely  as  they  can.  Of  real  training  of 
the  mind  there  is  very  little  in  any  school.  The 
rich  do  not  want  their  children  overworked1; 
the  poor  want  a  practical  result  for  their 
children's  fantastically  long  school  hours.  So 
domestic  science  comes  in  for  girls,  and  caj> 

[79] 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


pentering  for  boys.  Anything  to  make  it  easy, 
on  the  one  hand;  anything  to  make  a  universal 
standard  possible,  on  the  other. 

Take  one  example  only :  the  attitude  towards 
Greek.  There  are  two  arguments  against  teach 
ing  our  children  Greek:  one,  that  it  is  too 
hard;  the  other,  that  it  is  useless.  The  mere 
fact  that  public  opinion  has  drummed  Greek 
out  of  court  as  an  inevitable  part  of  a  college 
curriculum  shows  that  these  arguments  have 
been  potent.  No  person  who  could  be  influ 
enced  by  either  has  the  remotest  conception  of 
the  meaning  or  the  value  of  culture.  Culture 
has  never  renounced  a  thing  because  it  was 
difficult,  or  because  it  did  not  help  people  to 
make  money.  And  the  mere  fact  that  Greek  is 
no  longer  supposed  by  the  vast  majority  of 
parents  to  be  of  any  "use" — even  as  a  matter 
of  reputation — to  their  sons,  shows  that  the 
old  standards  of  culture  have  changed.  The 
larger  number  of  our  public  schools  no  longer 
teach  Greek  at  all;  a  great  many  private 
schools  have  to  make  special  arrangements  for 
pupils  who  wish  to  study  it.  And  the  attitude 
towards  Greek  is  only  a  sign  of  our  democratic, 
materialistic  times. 

Now  I  have  done  with  the  colleges.  I  have 
dealt  with  them  at  all  only  by  way  of  hinting 
that  they  have  been  so  democratized  that  cul 
ture  means,  even  to  its  avowed  exponents, 
.something  different  from  what  it  has  ever 


THE  EXTIRPATION  OF  CULTURE 

meant  before.  May  I  speak  for  one  moment 
explicitly  of  the  public  schools?  For  we  must 
trace  all  this  back  to  the  source — must  begin 
with  the  ostensible  homes  of  "culture"  and 
follow  up  the  stream  to  the  latent  public  con 
sciousness.  Each  class  that  comes  into  college 
has  read  fewer  and  fewer  of  what  are  called 
the  classics  of  English  literature.  An  astonish 
ing  number  of  boys  and  girls  have  read  nothing 
worth  reading  except  the  books  that  are  in  the 
entrance  requirements.  An  increasing  propor 
tion  of  the  sons  and  daughters  of  the  prosper 
ous  are  positively  illiterate  at  college  age. 
They  cannot  spell;  they  cannot  express  them 
selves  grammatically;  and  they  are  inclined  to 
think  that  it  does  not  matter.  General  laxity, 
and  the  adoption  of  educational  fads  which 
play  havoc  with  real  education,  are  largely 
responsible.  In  the  less  fortunate  classes,  the 
fact  seems  to  be  that  the  public  schools  are  so 
swamped  by  foreigners  that  all  the  teachers 
can  manage  to  do  is  to  teach  the  pupils  a  little 
workable  English.  Needless  to  say,  the  profes 
sion  of  the  public-school  teacher  has  become 
less  and  less  tempting  to  people  who  are  really 
fit  for  it. 

It  is  not  only  in  the  great  cities  that  the 
immigrant  population  swamps  the  schoolroom. 
An  educated  woman  told  me,  not  long  since, 
that  there  was  no  school  in  the  place  where 
she  lived — one  of  our  oldest  New  England 

I  81  ] 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


towns — to  which  she  could  send  her  boy.  The 
town  could  not  support  a  private  school  for 
young  children;  and  the  public  school  was  out 
of  the  question.  I  had  been  brought  up  to 
believe  that  public  schools  in  old  New  England 
towns  were  very  decent  places ;  and  I  asked  her 
why.  The  answer  made  it  clear.  Three  fourths 
of  the  school-children  were  Lithuanians,  and  a 
decently  bred  American  child  could  simply 
learn  nothing  in  their  classes.  They  had  to  be 
taught  English,  first  of  all;  they  approached 
even  the  most  elementary  subjects  very  slowly; 
and  —  natural  corollary  —  the  teachers  them 
selves  were  virtually  illiterate.  Therefore  she 
was  teaching  her  boy  at  home  until  he  could 
go  to  a  preparatory  school.  Fortunately,  she 
was  capable  of  doing  it;  but  there  are  many 
mothers  who  cannot  ground  their  children  in 
the  languages  and  sciences.  A  woman  who 
could  not  would  have  had  to  watch  her  child 
acquiring  a  Lithuanian  accent  and  the  locutions 
of  the  slum. 

An  isolated  case  is  never  worth  much.  But 
one  has  only  to  consider  conditions  at  large  to 
see  that  this  has  everything  to  make  it  typical. 
One  has  only  to  look  at  any  official  record  of 
immigration,  any  chart  of  distribution  of  popu 
lation  by  races,  to  see  how  the  old  American 
stock  is  being  numerically  submerged.  If  you 
do  not  wish  to  look  at  anything  so  dull  as 
statistics,  look  at  the  comic  papers.  A  fact 

82 


THE  EXTIRPATION  OF  CULTURE 

does  not  become  a  stock  joke  until  it  is  pretty 
well  visible  to  the  average  man.  Our  fore 
fathers  cared  immensely  for  education;  they 
felt  themselves  humble  before  learning;  and 
their  schools  followed,  soon  and  sacredly,  upon 
their  churches.  They  stood  in  awe  of  the  real 
thing;  and  they  had  no  illusions  as  to  the  ease 
of  the  scholar's  path.  They  legislated  for  their 
schools  solemnly,  and  if  not  with  complete 
wisdom,  always  at  least  with  accurate  ideals. 
Educational  (like  all  other)  legislation  now 
adays  is  largely  in  the  hands  of  illiterate 
people,  and  the  illiterate  will  take  good  care 
that  their  illiteracy  is  not  made  a  reproach  to 
them.  If  any  one  chooses  to  say  that  culture 
must  always  be  in  the  hands  of  an  oligarchy, 
and  that  the  oligarchy  has  not  been  touched, 
I  will  only  ask  him  to  consider  the  pupils  and 
the  teaching  in  most  private  schools.  In  the 
end,  prestige  values  are  going  to  tell;  and  the 
vast  bulk  of  our  population  will  see  to  it  that 
the  prestige  values  are  not  absolutely  unattain 
able  to  them.  The  great  fortunes  have  made 
their  way  to  the  top — yes,  really  to  the  top.  In 
many  cases  there  has  been  time  for  a  quick 
veneer  of  grammar  to  be  laid  over  their  origi 
nal  English.  In  many  cases  there  has  not;  and 
no  one  cares.  The  custodians  of  culture  cannot 
afford  to  care;  for  their  custody  must  either 
be  endowed  or  be  forsaken. 

Oh,  yes,  there  are  a  few  Brahmins  left;  but 

[83] 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


one  has  only  to  look  at  the  marriages  of  any 
given  season  to  see  what  is  becoming  of  the 
purity  of  the  Brahmin  caste.  The  Brahmins 
themselves  are  beginning  to  see  that  they  are 
lost  unless  they  compound  with  the  material 
ists,  and  make  or  marry  money — or  increase, 
by  aid  of  the  materialists,  what  they  have 
inherited.  In  what  New  England  village,  now, 
is  the  minister  or  the  scholar  looked  up  to  as 
a  fount  of  municipal  wisdom  because  he  is  a 
learned  man?  Is  he  a  "good  mixer"?  That  is 
what  they  ask :  I  have  heard  them.  Once  it  was 
possible  in  America  for  a  poor  man  to  hope  to 
gain  for  his  children,  if  they  deserved  it,  the 
life  of  the  intellect  and  of  the  spirit.  Now  it  no 
longer  is;  for  the  poor  themselves  have  defiled 
the  fount.  They  are  a  different  kind  of  poor, 
that  is  all;  and  they  have  become  an  active  and 
discontented  majority,  with  hands  that  pick 
and  steal.  When  they  no  longer  need  to  pick 
and  steal,  they  carry  their  infection  higher  and 
give  it  as  a  free  gift.  And  they  have  been  aided 
by  the  Brahmins  themselves;  who,  having  dab 
bled  in  sociology  pour  se  desoeuvrer,  and  then  for 
charity's  sake,  are  now  finding  that  sociology 
is  a  grim  matter  of  life  and  death,  and  endow 
chairs  of  it — as  if  one  should  endow  chairs  of 
self-preservation.  But  self-preservation  is  not 
culture  and  never  will  be;  and  no  study  of  the 
manners  and  customs  of  savages  or  slums  can 
call  itself  "contact  with  the  best  that  has  been 
thought  and  said  in  the  world." 


THE  EXTIRPATION  OF  CULTURE 

We  owe,  too,  I  think,  a  great  deal  of  our 
cultural  deterioration  (which  I  admit  is  a  vil 
lainous  phrase)  to  science.  Science  has  come  in 
with  a  rush,  and  is  at  present — why  deny  it? — 
on  top.  "Scientific"  is  a  word  to  charm  with, 
even  though  it  has  already  had  time  to  be 
degraded.  If  Mrs.  Eddy  had  called  her 
bargain-counter  Orientalism  anything  but  "sci 
ence,"  would  she  have  drawn  so  many  follow 
ers?  Science  has  done  great  things  for  us;  it 
has  also  pushed  us  hopelessly  back.  For,  not 
content  with  filling  its  own  place,  it  has  tried 
to  supersede  everything  else.  It  has  challenged 
the  super-eminence  of  religion;  it  has  turned 
all  philosophy  out  of  doors  except  that  which 
clings  to  its  skirts;  it  has  thrown  contempt  on 
all  learning  that  does  not  depend  on  it;  and  it 
has  bribed  the  skeptics  by  giving  us  immense 
material  comforts.  To  the  plea,  "Man  shall 
not  live  by  bread  alone,  but  by  every  word 
which  proceedeth  out  of  the  mouth  of  God," 
it  has  retorted  that  no  word  proceeds  authen 
tically  out  of  the  mouth  of  God  save  what  it 
has  issued  in  its  own  translations.  It  is  more 
rigorous  and  more  exclusive  than  the  Index  of 
the  Roman  Church.  The  Inquisition  never  did 
anything  so  oppressive  as  to  put  all  men,  inno 
cent  or  guilty,  into  a  laboratory.  Science  cares 
supremely  for  physical  things.  If  it  restricted 
itself  to  the  physical  world,  it  would  be  toler 
able:  we  could  shut  ourselves  away  with  our 
souls  in  peace.  But  it  must  control  the  soul  as 

[85] 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


well  as  the  body :  it  insists  on  reducing  all  emo 
tions,  however  miraculous  and  dear,  to  a  ques 
tion  of  nerve-centres.  There  has  never  been 
tyranny  like  this. 

Now  I  do  not  mean  to  say  that  all  scientists 
despise  culture.  That  would  be  silly  and  untrue. 
But  the  "scientific"  obsession  has  changed  all 
rankings  in  the  intellectual  world.  The  insidi- 
ousness  of  science  lies  in  its  claim  to  be  not  a 
subject,  but  a  method.  You  could  ignore  a  sub 
ject:  no  subject  is  all-inclusive.  But  a  method 
can  plausibly  be  applied  to  anything  within  the 
field  of  consciousness.  Small  wonder  that  the 
study  of  literature  turns  into  philology,  the 
study  of  history  into  archaeology,  and  the  study 
of  morals  and  aesthetics  into  physical  psychol 
ogy.  With  the  finer  appeals  of  philosophy  and 
poetry  and  painting  and  natural  beauty,  science 
need  not  meddle;  because  about  their  direct 
effect  on  the  thought  and  wills  of  men  it  can 
say  nothing  valuable.  You  cannot  determine 
the  value  of  a  Velasquez  by  putting  your  finger 
on  the  pulse  of  the  man  who  is  looking  at  it; 
or  the  value  of  Amiens  Cathedral  by  register 
ing  the  vibration  of  his  internal  muscles;  or  of 
the  Grand  Canon  of  the  Colorado  by  declaring 
that  all  perception  of  beauty  is  a  function  of 
sex.  Nor  does  it  matter  very  much,  at  the 
moment,  to  the  enraptured  reader  or  observer 
that  such  and  such  a  work  of  art  was  the 
logical  result  of  a  given  set  of  conditions.  The 

[86] 


THE  EXTIRPATION  OF  CULTURE 

point  is  that  it  is  there;  and  that  it  works 
potently  upon  us  in  ways  which  we  can  scarce 
phrase.  Culture  puts  us  disinterestedly  in  com 
munication  with  the  distilled  and  sifted  lore  of 
the  world.  Science  is  in  comparison  a  preju 
diced  affair — prejudiced  because  it  seeks  always 
to  bring  things  back  to  literal  and  physical 
explanations.  Far  be  it  from  me  to  deny  that 
geology,  biology,  physics,  have  given  us  un- 
apprehended  vistas  down  which  to  stray — 
only,  strictly  speaking,  it  forbids  the  straying. 
The  moment  the  layman's  imagination  begins 
to  profit,  begins  to  get  real  exhilaration  from 
scientific  discoveries,  it  contributes  something 
unwelcome  to  science.  Science  has  its  own  stern 
value;  in  the  end  we  are  all  profoundly  affected 
by  its  gains  in  the  field  of  fact.  One's  quarrel 
is  not  with  science  as  such,  but  with  science  as 
demanding  an  intellectual  and  spiritual  hegem 
ony.  With  nothing  less  than  hegemony,  how 
ever,  will  science  be  content. 

Now  if  it  is  not  yet  clear  what  effect  all  this 
must  have  on  culture,  a  few  words  may  make 
it  clearer.  The  great  danger  of  the  scientific 
obsession  is  not  the  destruction  of  all  things 
that  are  not  science,  but  the  slow  infection  of 
those  things.  If  the  laboratory  is  your  real 
test,  then  most  philosophies  and  all  art  are  no 
good.  The  scientists  are  not  good  philosophers, 
and  they  are  not  good  artists;  and  if  science  is 
to  rule  everywhere,  we  must  shelve  philosophy 

[87] 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


and  art,  or  else  take  them  into  the  laboratory. 
I  need  not  point  out  what  has  become  of  litera 
ture  under  a  scientific  regime.  We  all  know 
the  hopeless  fiction  that  is  created  by  the  scien 
tific  method;  fiction  that  banks  on  its  anec 
dotal  accuracy  and  has  in  it  no  spiritual  truth. 
Literature  is  simply  a  different  game :  you  do 
not  get  the  greatest  literary  truth  by  the  lab 
oratory  method.  Art  is  not  reducible  to  science, 
because  science  takes  no  account  of  the  special 
truth  which  is  beauty,  of  the  special  truth  which 
is  moral  imagination. 

It  is  not  only  by  the  laboratory  method  that 
our  fiction  has  been  ruined:  a  great  many  of 
our  writers  of  fiction  are  not  up  to  the  labor 
atory  method.  But  all  our  fiction  has  been 
harmed  by  the  prevalent  idea  that  no  fiction  is 
any  good  which  is  not  done  according  to  the 
laboratory  method,  and  that  even  fiction  which 
attempts  that  method  is  of  little  value  in  com 
parison  with  a  card-catalogue.  There  were  some 
snobs  who  were  not  affected  by  the  democratic 
fallacy;  but  even  the  snobs  have  been  affected 
by  scientific  scorn. 

I  may  have  seemed  to  be  showing  rather  the 
reasons  for  the  extirpation  of  culture  among  us 
than  the  fact  of  the  extirpation.  Perhaps  that 
is  not  the  best  way  to  go  to  work.  But  the 
actual  evidence  is  so  multitudinously  at  hand 
that  it  was  hardly  worth  while  beginning  with 
solemn  proofs  of  the  fact.  In  all  branches  of 
[881 


THE  EXTIRPATION  OF  CULTURE 

art  and  learning  we  have  a  cult  of  the  modern. 
Modern  languages  rank  Latin  and  Greek  in 
our  schools  and  colleges;  practical  and  "voca 
tional"  training  is  displacing  the  rudiments  of 
learning  in  all  of  our  public  and  many  of  our 
private  institutions  for  the  teaching  of  the 
young;  the  books  admitted  to  the  lists  of  "liter 
ature"  include  many  that  never  have  been  and 
never  will  be  literature.  I  found,  a  few  years 
ago,  the  following  books  on  a  list  from  which 
students  of  English  were  allowed  to  choose 
their  reading  for  the  course — this,  in  one  of 
the  old  and  respectable  high  schools  of  Massa 
chusetts,  not  twenty  miles  from  Boston:  Sol 
diers  of  Fortune,  Pushing  to  the  Front,  Greif  en- 
stein,  Doctor  Latimer,  The  Prisoner  of  Zenda, 
The  Honorable  Peter  Stirling,  The  First  Violin, 
and  "any  of  the  works  of  Stewart  Edward 
White."  These,  and  many  others,  may  be,  in 
their  way,  good  reading,  but  there  is  no  excuse 
for  offering  them  to  the  young  student  of  Eng 
lish  as  examples  of  "literature." 

Standards  of  beauty  and  truth  are  no  longer 
rigidly  held  up.  In  philosophy  we  have  produced 
pragmatism ;  in  art  we  have  produced  futurism 
— and  what  not,  since  then? — in  literature  we 
have  produced  the  pathologic  and  the  economic 
novel,  and  no  poetry  worth  speaking  of.  The 
"grand  style"  has  gone  out;  and  the  classics 
are  back  numbers.  Our  children  do  not  even 
speak  good  English;  and  no  one  minds.  They 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


cannot  be  bored  with  Scott  and  Dickens;  they 
cannot  be  bored  with  poetry  at  all.  And  why 
should  they,  when  their  fathers  and  mothers 
are  reading  Laddie  and  The  Sick-a-Bed  Lady, 
and  their  clergymen  are  preaching  about  The 
Inside  of  the  Cup — or  the  latest  work  deal 
ing  with  the  slums  by  some  one  who  was 
slum-born  and  slum-bred  and  is  proud  of  it? 
You  can  be  slum-born  and  slum-bred  and 
still  achieve  something  worth  while;  but  it  is 
a  stupid  inverted  snobbishness  to  be  proud  of 
it.  If  one  had  a  right  to  be  proud  of  anything, 
it  would  be  of  a  continued  decent  tradition 
back  of  one.  The  cultured  person  must  have 
put  in  a  great  many  years  with  nothing  to  show 
for  it;  his  parents  have  usually  put  in  a  great 
many  years,  for  him,  for  which  they  have 
nothing  to  show.  There  is  nothing  to  show, 
until  you  get  the  complex  result  of  the  discip 
lined  and  finished  creature.  "Culture"  means  a 
long  receptivity  to  things  of  the  mind  and  the 
spirit.  There  is  no  money  in  it;  there  is  nothing 
striking  in  it;  there  is  in  it  no  flattery  of  our 
own  time,  or  of  the  majority. 

Ours  is  a  commercial  age,  in  which  most 
people  are  bent  on  getting  money.  That  is  a 
platitude.  It  is  also,  intellectually  speaking,  a 
materialistic  age,  when  most  of  our  intellectual 
power  is  given  either  to  prophylaxis,  or  to 
industrial  chemistry,  or  to  the  invention  of 
physical  conveniences — all  ultimately  concerned 

[90] 


THE  EXTIRPATION  OF  CULTURE 

with  the  body.  Even  the  philanthropists  deal 
with  the  soul  through  the  body,  and  Chris 
tianity  has  long  since  become  "muscular." 
How,  in  such  an  age,  can  culture  flourish — 
culture,  which  cares  even  more  about  the  spirit 
than  about  the  flesh?  It  was  pointed  out  not 
long  ago,  in  an  Atlantic  article,  that  many  of 
our  greatest  minds  have  dwelt  in  bodies  that 
the  eugenists  would  have  legislated  out  of 
existence.  Many  of  the  greatest  saints  found 
sainthood  precisely  in  denying  the  power  of  the 
ailing  flesh  to  restrict  the  soul.  There  is  more 
in  the  great  mystics  than  psychiatry  will  ever 
account  for.  But  science,  in  spite  of  its  vistas, 
is  short-sighted.  It  talks  in  aeons,  but  keeps  its 
eye  well  screwed  to  the  microscope.  The  geol 
ogic  ages  are  dealt  with  by  pick  and  hammer 
and  reduced  to  slides,  and  the  lore  of  the  stars 
has  become  a  pure  matter  of  mathematical 
formulae.  Human  welfare  is  a  question  of 
microbes.  Neither  pundit  nor  populace  cares, 
at  the  present  day,  for  perspectives.  The  past 
is  discredited  because  it  is  not  modern.  Not  to 
be  modern  is  the  great  sin. 

So,  perhaps,  it  is.  But  every  one  has,  in  his 
day,  been  modern.  And  surely  even  modernity 
is  a  poor  thing  beside  immortality.  Since  we 
must  all  die,  is  it  not  perhaps  better  to  be  a 
dead  lion  than  a  living  dog?  And  is  it  not  a 
crime  against  human  nature  to  consider  negli 
gible  "the  best  that  has  been  thought  and  said 

[91] 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


in  the  world"?  It  is  only  by  considering  it 
negligible  that  we  can  consent  to  let  ourselves 
be  overrun  by  the  hordes  of  ignorance  and 
materialism  —  the  people  (God  save  the 
mark!)  of  to-morrow.  Let  us  stand,  if  we 
must,  on  practical  grounds:  the  bird  in  the 
hand  is  worth  two  in  the  bush.  As  if  our  only 
guaranty  that  to-morrow  would  be  tolerable 
were  not  precisely  that  it  is  sprung  from  a  past 
that  we  know  to  have  been,  at  many  points, 
noble!  It  is  pathetic  to  see  people  refusing  to 
learn  the  lessons  of  history;  it  is  a  waste  that 
no  efficiency  expert  ought  to  permit.  All  learn 
ing  is  a  textbook  which  would  save  much  time 
to  him  who  works  for  the  perfection  of  the 
world.  But  I  begin  to  think  that  our  age  does 
not  really  care  about  perfection;  and  that  it 
would  rather  make  a  thousand-year-old  mistake 
than  learn  a  remedy  from  history.  So  much  the 
worse  for  to-morrow ! 

But  meanwhile  let  us — those  of  us  who 
can — see  to  it  that  the  pre-eminent  brains  of 
other  ages  shall  not  have  passed  away  in  vain. 
M.  Anatole  France,  in  La  Revolte  des 
Anges,  has  a  good  deal  to  say  about  the 
absurdity  of  a  Jehovah  who  still  believes  in 
the  Ptolemaic  system.  Well,  the  PtolemaYc  sys 
tem  did  not  prevent  the  ancient  world  from 
giving  us  Greek  theatres  and  Roman  law,  or 
England  from  giving  us  Magna  Charta.  We 
are  still  imitating  Greek  theatres  (rather 

[92] 


THE  EXTIRPATION  OF  CULTURE 

badly,  I  admit)  in  our  stadia;  Roman  law 
is  still,  by  and  large,  good  enough  for  such 
an  enlightened  country  as  France;  and  Magna 
Charta — or  its  equivalent — had  to  be  there 
before  we  could  have  a  Declaration  of  Inde 
pendence.  Our  superior  scientific  knowledge 
has  not  given  us  our  standards  of  beauty  or 
justice  or  liberty.  Let  us  take  what  the  present 
offers — airplanes  and  all.  But  let  us  not  throw 
away  what  other  men,  in  other  ages,  have  died 
for  the  sake  of  discovering.  If  the  lore  of  the 
past  is  useless,  there  is  every  chance — one  must 
be  very  overweening  indeed  not  to  admit  it — 
that  the  lore  of  our  generation  will  be  useless, 
i  too.  Culture — whether  you  use  the  word  itself 
or  find  another  term — means  only  a  decent 
economy  of  human  experience.  You  cannot 
improve  on  things  without  keeping  those  things 
pretty  steadily  in  mind.  Otherwise  you  run  the 
risk  of  wasting  a  lot  of  time  doing  something 
that  has  already  been  done.  Any  one,  I  think, 
will  admit  that.  And  it  is  not  a  far  step  to  the 
realization  that  on  the  whole  it  is  wise  not  to 
lose  the  past  out  of  our  minds.  There  is  no 
glory  in  being  wiser  than  the  original  savage; 
there  is  glory  in  being  wiser  than  the  original 
sage.  But  in  order  to  be  wiser  than  he,  we  must 
have  a  shrewd  suspicion  of  how  wise  he  was. 
By  and  large,  without  culture,  that  shrewd 
suspicion  will  never  be  ours. 

[93] 


FASHIONS  IN  MEN 

NEVER,  I  fancy,  has  it  been  more  true 
than  it  is  today,  that  fiction  reflects  life. 
The  best  fiction  has  always  given  us  a 
kind  of  precipitate  of  human  nature — Don 
Quixote  and  Tom  Jones  are  equally  "true," 
and  true,  in  a  sense,  for  all  time;  but  our 
modern  books  give  us  every  quirk  and  turn  of 
the  popular  ideal,  and  fifty  years  hence,  if  read 
at  all,  may  be  too  "quaint"  for  words.  And  to 
any  one  who  has  been  reading  fiction  for  the 
last  twenty  years,  it  is  cryingly  obvious  that 
fashions  in  human  nature  have  changed. 

My  first  novel  was  Jane  Eyre;  and  at  the 
age  of  eight,  I  fell  desperately  in  love  with 
Fairfax  Rochester.  No  instance  could  serve 
better  to  point  the  distance  we  have  come.  I 
was  not  an  extraordinary  little  girl  (except 
that,  perhaps,  I  was  extraordinarily  fortunate 
in  being  permitted  to  encounter  the  classics  in 
infancy),  and  I  dare  say  that  if  I  had  not  met 
Mr.  Rochester,  I  should  have  succumbed  to 
some  imaginary  gentleman  of  a  quite  different 
stamp.  It  may  be  that  I  should  have  fallen  in 
love — had  time  and  chance  permitted — with 
V.  V.  or  The  Beloved  Vagabond.  But  I 
doubt  it.  In  the  first  place,  novels  no  longer 

[94] 


FASHIONS  IN  MEN 


assume  that  it  is  the  prime  business  of  the 
female  heart  (at  whatever  age)  to  surrender 
itself  completely  to  some  man.  Consequently, 
the  men  in  the  novels  of  today  are  not  calcu 
lated,  as  they  once  were,  to  hit  the  fluttering 
mark.  The  emotions  are  the  last  redoubt  to  be 
taken,  as  modern  tactics  direct  the  assault 

People  are  always  telling  us  that  fashions 
in  women  have  changed:  what  seems  to  me 
almost  more  interesting  is  that  fashions  in  men 
(the  stable  sex)  have  changed  to  match.  The 
new  woman  (by  which  I  mean  the  very  new 
est)  would  not  fall  in  love  with  Mr.  Roches 
ter.  It  is  therefore  "up  to"  the  novelists  to 
create  heroes  whom  the  modern  heroine  will 
fall  in  love  with.  This,  to  the  popular  satis 
faction,  they  have  done.  And  not  only  in  fiction 
have  the  men  changed;  in  life,  too,  the  men 
of  to-day  are  quite  different.  I  know,  because 
my  friends  marry  them. 

It  is  immensely  interesting,  this  difference. 
One  by  one,  the  man  has  sloughed  off  his  most 
masculine  (as  we  knew  them)  characteristics. 
Gone  are  Mr.  Rochester,  who  fought  the  duel 
with  the  vicomte  at  dawn,  and  Burgo  Fitz 
gerald  (the  only  love  of  that  incomparable 
woman,  Lady  Glencora  Palliser),  who  break 
fasted  on  Curasao  and  pate  de  foie  gras.  No 
longer  does  Blanche  Ingram  declare,  "An  Eng 
lish  hero  of  the  road  would  be  the  next  best 
thing  to  an  Italian  bandit,  and  that  could  only 

[951 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


be  surpassed  by  a  Levantine  pirate."  Blanche 
Ingram  wants — and  gets — the  Humanitarian 
Hero :  some  one  who  has  particular  respect  for 
convicts  and  fallen  women,  and  whose  favorite 
author  is  TolstoT.  He  must  qualify  for  the 
possession  of  her  hand  by  long,  voluntary  resi 
dence  in  the  slums;  he  may  inherit  ancestral 
acres  only  if  he  has,  concerning  them,  social 
istic  intentions.  He  must  be  too  altruistic  to 
kill  grouse,  and  if  he  is  to  be  wholly  up-to- 
date,  he  must  refuse  to  eat  them.  He  must 
never  order  "pistols  and  coffee" :  his  only  per 
mitted  weapon  is  benevolent  legislation. 

I  do  not  mean  that  he  is  to  be  a  milk-sop — 
"muscular  Christianity"  has  at  least  taught  us 
that  it  is  well  for  the  hero  to  be  in  the  pink  of 
condition,  as  he  may  any  day  have  a  street 
fight  on  his  hands.  And  he  should  have  the 
tongues  of  men  and  of  angels.  Gone  is  the 
inarticulate  Guardsman — gone  forever.  The 
modern  hero  has  read  books  that  Burgo  Fitz 
gerald  and  Guy  Livingstone  and  Mr.  Roches 
ter  never  heard  of.  He  is  ready  to  address  any 
gathering,  and  to  argue  with  any  antagonist, 
until  dawn.  He  is,  preferably,  personally  un 
conscious  of  sex  until  the  heroine  arrives;  but 
he  is  by  no  means  effeminate.  He  is  a  very 
complicated  and  interesting  creature.  Some 
mediaeval  traits  are  discernible  in  him;  but  the 
eighteenth  century  would  not  have  known  him 
for  human. 

[96] 


FASHIONS  IN  MEN 


What  has  he  lost,  this  hero,  and  what  has 
he  gained?  How  did  it  all  begin?  In  life, 
doubtless,  it  began  with  a  feminine  change  of 
taste.  Brilliant  plumage  has  ceased  to  allure; 
and,  I  suspect,  the  peacock's  tail,  as  much  as 
the  anthropoid  ape's,  is  destined  to  elimination. 
We  women  of  to-day  are  distrustful  of  the 
peacock's  tail.  We  are  mortally  afraid  of  being 
misled  by  it,  and  of  discovering,  too  late,  that 
the  peacock's  soul  is  not  quite  the  thing.  Never 
has  there  been  among  the  feminine  young  more 
scientific  talk  about  sex,  and  never  among  the 
feminine  young  such  a  scientific  distrust  of  it. 
Before  a  young  woman  suspects  that  she  wants 
to  marry  a  young  man,  she  has  probably  dis 
cussed  with  him,  exhaustively,  the  penal  code, 
white  slavery,  eugenics,  and  race-suicide.  The 
miracle — the  everlasting  miracle  of  Nature — 
is  that  she  should  want,  in  these  circumstances, 
to  marry  him  at  all.  She  probably  does  not, 
unless  his  views  have  been  wholly  to  her  satis 
faction.  And  with  those  views,  what  has  the 
perpetual  glory  of  the  peacock's  tail  to  do? 

So  much  for  life.  In  our  English  fiction,  I 
am  inclined  to  believe  that  George  Eliot  began 
it  with  Daniel  Deronda.  But,  in  our  own  day, 
Meredith  did  more.  Up  to  the  time  of  Mere 
dith,  the  dominant  male  was  the  fashionable 
hero.  Tom  Jones,  and  Sir  Charles  Grandison, 
and  Fairfax  Rochester,  and  "Stunning"  War- 
rington  are  as  different  as  possible;  but  all  of 

[97] 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


them,  in  their  several  ways,  keep  up  one  male 
tradition  in  fiction.  It  is  within  our  own  day 
that  that  tradition  has  entirely  changed.  Have 
you  ever  noticed  how  inveterately,  in  Mere 
dith's  novels,  the  schoolmaster  or  his  spiritual 
kinsman  comes  out  on  top?  Lord  Ormont  can 
not  stand  against  Matey  Weyburn,  Lord  Fleet- 
wood  against  Owain  Wythan,  Sir  Willoughby 
Patterne  against  Vernon  Whitford.  The  little 
girl  who  fell  in  love  with  Mr.  Rochester  would 
have  preferred  any  one  of  these  gentlemen 
(yes,  even  Sir  Willoughby!)  to  his  rival;  but 
I  dare  say  the  event  would  have  proved  her 
wrong.  Certainly  the  wisdom  of  the  ladies' 
choice  was  never  doubtful  to  Meredith  him 
self.  The  soldier  and  the  aristocrat  cannot  en 
dure  the  test  they  are  put  to  by  the  sympathetic 
male  with  a  penchant  for  the  enfranchised 
woman.  Vain  for  Lord  Ormont  to  accede  to 
Aminta!s  taste  for  publicity;  vain  for  Lord 
Fleetwood  to  become  the  humble  wooer  of 
Carinthia  Jane:  each  has  previously  been  con 
victed  of  pride. 

Now,  in  an  earlier  day,  no  woman  would 
have  looked  at  a  man  who  was  not  proud — 
who  was  not,  even,  a  little  too  proud.  Pride, 
by  which  Lucifer  fell,  was  the  chief  hall-mark 
of  the  gentleman.  Moreover,  in  that  earlier 
day,  women  did  not  expect  their  heroes  to 
explain  everything  to  them:  a  certain  amount 
of  reticence,  a  measure  of  silence,  was  also  one 

[98] 


FASHIONS  IN  MEN 


of  the  hall-marks  of  the  gentleman.  If  a  bit  of 
mystery  could  be  thrown  in,  so  much  the  better. 
It  gave  her  something  to  exercise  her  imagina 
tion  on.  Think  of  the  Byronic  males — Conrad, 
Lara,  and  the  rest !  If  they  had  told  all,  where 
would  they  have  been?  Think  of  Lovelace  and 
Heathcliff  and  Darcy  and  Brian  de  Bois 
Guilbert! 

Heroes,  once,  were  always  disdaining  to 
speak,  and  spurning  their  foes.  Nowadays,  no 
hero  disdains  to  speak,  and  no  hero  ventures 
to  spurn  anyone — least  of  all,  his  foes.  He  is 
humble  of  heart  and  very  loquacious.  Mrs. 
Humphry  Ward  has  inherited  from  George 
Eliot;  and  the  latest  heroes  of  Mr.  Gals 
worthy  and  Mr.  Hewlett,  for  example,  are  the 
children  of  Vernon  Whitford,  Matey  Weyburn, 
and  Owain  Wythan  (of  whom  it  is  not  ex 
plicitly  written  that  they  had  any  others). 
They  are  humanitarian  and  democratic;  they 
are  ignorant  of  hatred;  they  are  inclined  to 
think  the  ill-born  necessarily  better  than  the 
well-born;  and  they  are  quite  sure  that  women 
are  superior  to  men.  True,  Mr.  Galsworthy 
always  seems  to  be  looking  backward ;  he  never 
forgets  the  ancient  tradition  that  he  is  com 
bating.  His  young  aristocrats  who  eschew  the 
ways  of  aristocracy  are  unhappy,  and  virtue  in 
their  case  is  "its  only  reward."  Perhaps  that 
is  why  his  novels  always  leave  us  with  the 
medicinal  taste  of  inconclusion  in  our  mouths. 

[99] 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


But  take  a  handful  of  heroes  elsewhere:  the 
Reverend  John  Hodder,  the  ex-convict  "Dan 
iel  Smith,"  V.  V.,  or  even  Coryston,  the 
Socialist  peer.  Where,  in  a  lot  of  them,  do 
you  find  either  pride  or  reticence  in  the  old 
sense?  Where,  in  any  one  of  them,  do  you  find 
the  Satanic  charm?  Which  one  would  Harriet 
Byron,  or  Jane  Eyre,  or  Catherine  Earnshaw, 
or  Elizabeth  Bennett,  have  looked  at  with  eyes 
of  love? 

The  "Satanic  charm."  The  phrase  is  out. 
Milton,  I  suspect,  is  responsible  for  the  tradi 
tion  that  has  lasted  so  long,  and  is  now  being 
broken  utterly  to  pieces.  Milton  made  Satan 
delightful,  and  our  good  Protestant  novelists 
for  a  long  time  followed  his  lead,  in  that  they 
gave  their  delightful  men  some  of  the  Satanic 
traits.  Proud  they  were  and  scornfully  silent, 
as  we  have  recalled;  and  conventional  to  the 
last  degree.  "Conventional,"  that  is,  in  the 
stricter  sense;  by  which  it  is  not  meant  that  as 
portraits  they  were  unconvincing,  or  that,  as 
men,  they  never  offended  Mrs.  Grundy.  They 
•were  conventional  in  that  they  followed  a  con 
vention;  in  that  they  were,  to  a  large  extent, 
predicable.  They  were  jealous  of  their  honor, 
and  believed  it  vindicable  by  the  duel;  they  had 
no  doubt  that  good  women  were  better  than 
bad,  and  that  pedigree  in  human  beings  was  as 
important  as  pedigree  in  animals;  and  though 
they  might  be  quixotic  on  occasion,  they  were 
not  democratic  pour  deux  sous.  The  barmaid 

[100] 


FASHIONS  IN  ~MEN~ 


was  not  their  sister,  nor  the  stevedore  their 
brother.  (The  Satan  of  Paradise  Lost,  as  we 
all  remember,  was  a  splendid  snob.) 

Moreover,  they  were  sophisticated — and  not 
merely  out  of  books.  The  Faust  idea,  having 
prevailed  for  many  centuries,  has  at  last  been 
abandoned — and  perhaps,  our  sober  sense  may 
tell  us,  rightly;  but  not  so  long  ago  there  was 
still  something  more  repellent  to  the  female 
imagination  about  the  man  who  chose  not  to 
know,  than  about  the  man  who  chose  not  to 
abstain.  I  do  not  mean  that  we  were  supposed 
always  to  be  looking  for  a  Tom  Jones  or  a 
Roderick  Random — we  might  be  looking  for 
a  Sir  Charles  Grandison,  no  less;  but  at  least, 
when  we  found  our  hero,  we  expected  to  find 
him  wiser  than  we.  Nowadays,  a  girl  rather 
likes  to  give  a  man  points — and  often  (in  fic 
tion,  at  least)  has  to.  Meredith  railed  against 
the  "veiled  virginal  doll"  as  heroine.  Well: 
our  heroines  now  are  never  veiled  virginal 
dolls;  but  sometimes  our  heroes  are.  Lancelot 
has  gone  out,  and  Galahad  has  come  in.  I 
suspect  that  there  is  a  literary  law  of  compen 
sation,  and  that,  Ibsen  and  Strindberg  to  the 
contrary  notwithstanding,  there  has  to  be  a 
veiled  virginal  doll  somewhere  in  a  really  tak 
ing  romance.  Perhaps  it  is  fair  that  the  sterner 
sex  should  have  its  turn  at  guarding  ideals  by 
the  hearthstone,  while  women  make  the  grand 
tour. 

Let  me  not  be   misunderstood.   I   am   not 

[10!] 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


referring  particularly  to  that  knowledge  which 
any  man  is  better  without,  but  to  the  Odyssean 
experience  which,  in  their  respective  measures, 
heroes  were  wont  to  have  behind  them : 

'And  saw  the  cities,  and  the  counsels  knew 

Of  many  men,  and  many  a  time  at  sea 
Within  his  heart  he  bore  calamity.' 

They  had  at  least  seen  the  towns  and  the 
minds  of  men,  and  their  morals  were  the  less 
likely  to  be  upset  by  a  conventional  assault 
upon  them.  Does  any  one  chance  to  remember, 
I  wonder,  Theron  Ware,  led  to  his  "damna 
tion"  by  his  first  experience  of  a  Chopin  noc 
turne?  It  would  have  taken  more  than  a 
Chopin  nocturne  to  make  any  of  our  seasoned 
heroes  do  something  that  he  did  not  wish  to. 
They  knew  something  of  society,  and  ergo  of 
women;  they  had  experienced,  directly  or 
vicariously,  human  romance;  and  they  had 
read  history.  Nowadays,  they  are  apt  to  know 
little  or  nothing — to  begin  with — of  society, 
women,  or  romance,  except  what  may  be  got 
from  brand-new  books  on  sociology;  and  they 
pride  themselves  on  knowing  no  history.  His 
tory,  with  its  eternal  stresses  and  selections,  is 
nothing  if  not  aristocratic,  and  our  heroes  now 
adays  must  be  democratic  or  they  die.  It  is  an 
age  of  complete  faith  in  the  superiority  of  the 
lower  classes — the  swing  of  the  pendulum,  no 

[102] 


FASHIONS  IN  MEN 


doubt,  from  the  other  extreme  of  thinking  the 
lower  classes  morally  and  aesthetically  negli 
gible.  "Privilege"  is  as  detestable  now  in  mat 
ters  of  intellect  and  breeding  as  in  matters  of 
finance  and  politics.  The  man  with  the  muck 
rake  has  got  past  the  office  into  the  drawing- 
room.  If  your  hero  has  the  bad  luck  not  to 
have  been  born  in  the  slums,  he  must  at  least 
have  the  wit  to  take  up  his  habitation  there  as 
soon  as  he  comes  of  age.  We  have  learned  that 
riches  are  corrupting,  but  (except  in  the  special 
sense  of  vice-commission  reports)  we  have  not 
yet  learned  that  poverty  is  rather  more  cor 
rupting  than  wealth. 

Sophistication,  whether  social,  intellectual, 
or  aesthetic,  is  now  the  deadly  sin.  If  we  are 
sophisticated,  we  may  not  be  good  enough  for 
Ellis  Island.  And  there  goes  another  of  the 
hall-marks  of  the  gentleman  as  he  was  once 
known  to  fiction.  Our  hero  in  old  days  might 
not  have  condescended  to  the  glittering  assem 
blies  of  fashion,  but  there  was  never  any  doubt 
that,  if  he  had,  he  would,  in  spite  of  himself, 
have  been  king  of  his  company  as  soon  as  he 
entered  the  room.  He  might  have  been  hard 
up,  but  his  necktie  would  not  have  been  "a 
black  sea  holding  for  life  a  school  of  fat  white 
fish."  He  might  have  been  lonely  or  gloomy, 
but  he  would  not  have  been  diffident,  and  he 
would  never,  never,  never  have  "blinked"  at 
the  heroine.  "My  godlike  friend  had  carelessly 
[  103] 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


put  his  hair-brush  into  the  butter,"  says  Asti- 
cot,  at  the  outset,  of  the  Beloved  Vagabond. 
Now  in  picaresque  novels,  we  were  always 
meeting  people  who  did  that  sort  of  thing;  but 
they  were  not  gentlemen.  Whereas,  the  Be 
loved  Vagabond  is  of  noble  birth,  and  despite 
his  ten  years'  abeyance,  finds  the  countess  quite 
ready  to  marry  him.  She  does  not  marry  him 
in  the  end,  to  be  sure,  but  we  are  permitted  to 
feel  that  there  was  something  lacking  in  her 
because  Paragons  manners  at  tea  did  not 
please  her.  The  hero  of  old  had  what  used  to 
be  called  "a  sense  of  fitness,"  and  a  saving  sense 
of  humor,  which  combined  to  prevent  his  enter 
ing  a  ballroom  as  John  the  Baptist.  The  same 
lucky  combination  would  have  prevented  him — 
in  literature,  at  least — from  wooing  the  mil 
lionaire's  child  with  dusty  commonplaces  of  the 
Higher  Criticism  or  jeremiads  against  the 
daughters  of  Heth.  But  perhaps  millionaires' 
children  today  take  that  sort  of  thing  for 
manners.  To  the  argument  that  a  performance 
of  the  kind  takes  courage,  one  can  only  reply 
that,  judging  from  the  enthusiasm  with  which 
the  preaching  hero  is  received  by  the  heroine, 
it  apparently  does  not.  And  in  any  case,  the 
hero  is  too  sublimely  ignorant  of  what  socially 
constitutes  courage  to  deserve  any  credit  for  it. 
Sometimes,  of  course,  like  Mr.  Galsworthy's 
men,  he  perceives,  with  some  inherited  sense, 
that  his  kind  of  thing  is  not  likely  to  be  wel- 

[104] 


FASHIONS  IN  MEN 


corned;  and  then  he  goes  sadly  and  sternly 
away,  leaving  the  girl  to  accept  a  wooer  with 
more  technique.  But  usually  he  cuts  out  every 
body.  For  the  chief  hall-mark  of  a  gentleman, 
now,  is  the  desire  to  reform  his  own  class  out 
of  all  recognition. 

Women,  as  we  know,  have  long  wanted  to 
be  talked  to  as  if  they  were  men;  and  the 
result  is  that  heroines  now  let  themselves  be 
lectured  at  in  a  way  that  very  few  men  would 
endure.  Alison  Parr  marries  the  Rev.  John 
Hodder,  and  Carlisle  Heth  would  have  mar 
ried  V.  V.  if  he  had  lived.  Well:  Clara 
Middleton  married  Vernon  Whitford,  and 
Carinthia  Jane  married  Owain  Wythan,  and 
Aminta  married  Matey  Weyburn. 

I  may  have  seemed  to  be  speaking  cynically. 
That,  I  can  give  my  word  of  honor,  I  am  not. 
It  is  well  that  we  have  come  to  realize  that 
there  are  some  adventures  which,  in  them 
selves,  add  no  lustre  to  a  man's  name.  It  is 
well  that  we  take  thought  for  the  lower  strata 
of  humanity — though  our  actual  reforms,  I 
fancy,  show  their  authors  as  taking  thought 
not  for  to-morrow  but  for  to-day.  Certainly 
brutality,  or  the  indifference  which  is  negative 
brutality,  is  not  a  beautiful  or  a  moral  thing; 
and  certainly  we  do  not  particularly  sympa 
thize  with  Thackeray  shedding  tears  as  he 
went  away  from  his  publishers  because  they 
had  obliged  him  to  save  Pendennis's  chastity. 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


That  dreadful  person,  Arthur  Pendennis, 
would  surely  not  have  been  made  any  less 
dreadful  by  being  permitted  to  seduce  Fanny 
Bolton. 

It  is  right  to  think  of  the  poor;  it  is  right  to 
bend  our  energies,  as  citizens,  to  the  economic 
bettering  of  their  lot.  No  one  could  sanely 
regret  our  doing  so.  But  there  is  always  danger 
in  saying  the  thing  which  is  not,  and  in  pre 
tending  that  because  some  virtues  have  hith 
erto  not  been  recognized,  the  virtues  that  have 
been  recognized  are  no  good.  One  sympathizes 
with  Towneley  (in  that  incomparable  novel 
The  Way  of  All  Flesh)  when  Ernest  asks  him: 

"  'Don't  you  like  poor  people  very  much 
yourself?' 

"Towneley  gave  his  face  a  comical  but  good- 
natured  screw  and  said  quietly,  but  slowly  and 
decidedly,  'No,  no,  no,'  and  escaped. 

uOf  course,  some  poor  people  were  very 
nice,  and  always  would  be  so,  but  as  though 
scales  had  fallen  suddenly  from  his  eyes  he 
saw  that  no  one  was  nicer  for  being  poor,  and 
that  between  the  upper  and  lower  classes  there 
was  a  gulf  which  amounted  practically  to  an 
impassable  barrier." 

It  is  a  great  pity  that  Samuel  Butler  did  not 
live  longer  and  write  more  novels.  But  in  re 
gretting  him,  we  shall  do  well  to  remember 
that  though  publication  was  delayed  until  some 
time  after  the  author's  death,  the  bulk  of  The 

[106! 


FASHIONS  IN  MEN 


Way  of  All  Flesh  was  written  in  the  '70's. 
The  Way  of  All  Flesh  is  not  sympathetic  to 
the  contemporary  mood;  it  is  one  of  those 
books  so  much  ahead  of  its  time  (except  per 
haps  in  ecclesiastical  matters)  that  the  time  has 
not  yet  caught  up  with  it.  It  was  doomed  in 
evitably  to  an  interval  of  oblivion.  The  case 
reminds  one  of  Richard  Feverel. 

Only  in  one  way  is  The  Way  of  All  Flesh 
quite  contemporary.  The  hero  thinks  so  well 
of  the  prostitute  that  he  marries  her.  On  the 
other  hand,  to  be  sure,  he  bitterly  regrets  it, 
which  is  not  contemporary.  I  do  not  mean  that 
the  hero's  marrying  her  is  especially  in  the 
literary  fashion,  but  his  thinking  well  of  her 
is.  You  will  notice  that  in  our  moral  fever  we 
do  not  leave  the  prostitute  out  of  our  novels — 
no,  indeed:  she  must  be  there  to  give  spice,  as 
of  old.  Only  now,  instead  of  being  entangled 
with  her,  the  young  gentleman  preaches  to  her ; 
and  she  loves  him  for  it.  Perhaps  this  is  what 
happens  nowadays  in  real  life.  I  do  not  pretend 
to  know;  but  I  suspect  it  is  true,  for  I  fancy 
the  only  kind  of  person  who  could  invent  the 
contemporary  plot  is  the  kind  who  would  live 
it.  The  wildest  imaginings  of  the  people  who 
are  made  differently  would  hardly  stretch  to 
it.  And  not  only  does  the  hero  find  himself 
immensely  touched  by  the  tragedy  of  the 
disreputable  woman — which  is,  after  all,  in 
certain  cases  plausible  enough — he  burns  to 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


introduce  his  fiancee  to  her.  Now  that,  again, 
may  be  life — Mr.  Winston  Churchill,  for 
example,  should  know  better  than  I — but  it  is 
certainly  a  world  with  the  sense  of  values  gone 
wrong.  And  when  we  have  lost  our  sense  of 
values,  we  shall  presently  lose  die  values  as 
well.  The  girl  herself  is  often  to  blame:  did 
not  the  fiancee  of  Simon  de  Gex  go  of  her  own 
initiative  to  see  the  animal-tamer,  and  come 
away  to  renounce  him,  convinced  that  the 
animal-tamer  was  the  nobler  woman?  Which, 
emphatically,  she  was  not.  But  then,  as  we 
know  from  long  experience  of  Mr.  Locke,  he 
cannot  keep  his  head  with  circus-people  about; 
and  sawdust  is  incense  to  him.  Let  Mr.  Locke 
have  his  little  foibles  by  all  means;  but  even 
Mr.  Locke  should  not  have  made  the  spoiled 
darling  of  society  marry  the  animal-tamer  (one 
side  of  her  face  having  been  nearly  clawed  off) 
and  then  go  with  her  into  city  missionary  work. 
Yet  I  do  not  believe  it  is  really  Mr.  Locke's 
fault.  The  public  at  present  loves  as  a  sister 
the  woman  with  a  past;  and  loves  city  mission 
ary  work,  if  possible,  more. 

The  fact  is  that  with  all  our  imitation  of 
Meredith — and  every  one  who  is  not  imitating 
Tolstoi'  is  imitating  Meredith — he  has  failed 
to  save  us.  We  have  taken  all  his  prescriptions 
blindly — except  one.  We  have  emancipated  our 
women  and  emasculated  our  men;  we  have  cast 
down  the  mighty  from  their  seats  and  exalted 

[108] 


FASHIONS  IN  MEN 


them  of  low  degree;  we  have  learned  all  the 
Radical  shibboleths  and  say  them  for  our 
morning  prayers;  and  we  have  faced  the  fact 
of  sex  so  squarely  that  we  can  hardly  see  any 
thing  else.  But  we  have  not  learned  his  saving 
hatred  of  the  sentimentalist.  Miss  May  Sin 
clair  has  admirably  pointed  out  in  her  study  of 
the  three  Brontes  that  Charlotte  Bronte 
was  exceedingly  modern  in  her  detestation  of 
sentimentality.  Modern  she  may  have  been — 
with  Meredith;  but  not  modern  with  the 
present  novelists,  for  they  are  almost  too  senti 
mental  to  be  endured.  And  there  is  the  whole 
trouble.  We  think  Thackeray  an  old  fool  for 
being  sentimental  over  Amelia  Sedley;  but  how 
does  it  better  the  case  to  be  sentimental,  in 
stead,  over  the  heroine  of  The  Promised 
Land?  Amelia  Sedley  was  all  in  all  a  much 
nicer  person,  if  not  half  so  clever.  She  may 
have  snivelled  a  good  deal,  but  she  was  capable 
of  loving  some  one  else  better  than  herself. 

Of  course,  I  have  cited  only  a  few  instances 
— those  that  happened  to  come  most  easily  to 
mind.  But  let  any  reader  of  fiction  run  over 
mentally  a  group  of  contemporary  heroes,  and 
see  if  the  substitutions  I  have  named  have  not 
pretty  generally  taken  place.  Has  not  pride 
given  way  to  humility,  reticence  to  glibness, 
class-consciousness  to  a  wild  democracy,  the 
code  of  manners  to  an  uncouth  unworldliness, 
and  honor  in  the  old  sense  to  a  burning  pas- 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


sion  for  reform — "any  old"  reform?  Do  not 
these  men  lead  us  into  the  heterogeneous  com 
pany  of  the  unclassed  of  both  sexes — and  ask 
us  to  look  upon  them  as  saints  in  motley?  Has 
not  the  world  of  fiction  changed  in  the  last 
twenty  years?  The  hero  in  old  days  sometimes 
fell  foul  of  the  law  by  getting  into  debt.  But 
we  were  not  supposed,  therefore,  to  be  on  his 
side  against  the  law.  Now,  the  hero  does  not, 
perhaps,  get  into  legal  difficulties  himself,  but 
he  is  always  passionately  on  the  side  of  the 
people  whom  laws  were  devised  to  protect  the 
respectable  from.  The  scientific  tendency  to 
consider  that  aristocracy  consists  merely  in 
freedom  from  certain  physical  taints  has  per 
meated  fiction.  "Is  not  one  man  as  good  as 
another?"  asked  the  demagogue.  "Of  course 
he  is,  and  a  great  deal  better!"  replied  the 
excited  Irishman  in  the  crowd.  We  are  in  the 
thick  of  a  popular  mania  for  thinking  all  the 
undesirables  "a  good  deal  better."  The  modern 
hero  is,  to  my  mind,  in  intention,  if  not  in 
execution,  an  admirable  figure ;  and  though  one 
rather  expects  him  any  day  to  give  his  whole 
fortune  for  a  gross  of  green  spectacles,  one 
will  not,  for  that,  find  him  any  less  likable. 
Some  day  he  will  rediscover  the  Dantesque 
hierarchy  of  souls  implicit  in  humanity.  And 
then,  perhaps,  he  will  get  back  his  charm. 

Some  one  is  probably  bursting  to  observe 
that  we  have  a  school  of  realists  at  hand;  and 
that  no  one  can  accuse  Mr.  Wells  and  Mr. 

[no] 


FASHIONS  IN  MEN 


Bennett  of  sentimentality — also  that  we  have 
Mr.  Shaw  and  Mr.  Granville  Barker  and  Mr. 
Masefield  as  mounted  auxiliaries  in  the  field. 
I  grant  Mr.  Bennett;  I  am  not  so  sure  about 
Mr.  Wells.  But  certainly  Mr.  Wells  is  not 
sentimental  as  Mr.  William  de  Morgan,  Mr. 
Winston  Churchill,  Mr.  Meredith  Nicholson, 
Mr.  Theodore  Dreiser,  Mr.  H.  S.  Harrison, 
and  Miss  Ellen  Glasgow  are  sentimental.  If 
he  is  sentimental  at  all,  it  is  rather  over  ideas 
than  people.  (Mr.  Masefield,  I  am  inclined  to 
think,  is  simply  catering  to  the  special  audience 
that  Thomas  Hardy,  by  his  silence,  has  left 
gaping  and  empty.)  Let  us  look  into  the  mat 
ter  a  little.  "Sentimental"  is  one  of  the  most 
difficult  catchwords  in  the  world  to  define;  and 
you  can  get  a  roomful  of  intelligent  people 
quarrelling  over  it  any  time.  Perhaps,  for  our 
purposes,  it  will  serve  merely  to  say  that  the 
sentimentalist  is  always,  in  one  way  or  another, 
disloyal  to  facts.  He  cannot  be  trusted  to  give 
a  straight  account,  because  his  own  sense  of 
things  is  more  valuable  to  him  than  the  truth. 
He  has  come  in  on  the  top  of  the  pragmatic 
wave,  and  the  sands  of  Anglo-Saxondom  are 
strewn  thick  with  him.  He  serves,  in  Kipling's 
phrase,  the  God  of  Things  as  They  Ought  to 
Be  (according  to  his  private  feeling).  His  own 
perversion  may  be  aesthetic,  or  intellectual,  or 
moral,  or  sociological,  but  he  is  always  recog 
nizable  by  his  tampering  with  truth. 

Now,  Mr.  Wells  does  tamper  with  truth, 
[in] 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


He  did  it,  for  example,  in  the  case  of  Ann 
Veronica.  He  wanted  Ann  Veronica  to  be  a 
nice  girl  under  twenty,  and  he  wanted  her, 
even  more,  to  be  unduly  awakened  to  certain 
physical  aspects  of  sex.  It  was  sentimentality 
that  made  him  draw  her  as  he  did :  determina 
tion  to  prove  that  the  girl  who  loved  as  he 
wanted  her  to  love  was  just  as  conventional  as 
any  one  else.  You  cannot  have  your  cake  and 
eat  it  too ;  but  the  sentimentalist  blindly  refuses 
to  accept  that.  Accordingly,  we  get  the  uncon 
vincing  creature  that  Mr.  Wells  wanted  to 
believe  existed.  Mr.  Wells's  heroes  may  not 
seem  to  bear  out  my  argument  so  well  as  Mr. 
Galsworthy's.  To  be  sure,  Mr.  Wells  is  not  so 
sentimental  as  Mr.  Galsworthy,  and  he  has 
not,  like  the  author  of  The  Man  of  Prop 
erty,  and  Fraternity,  and  Justice,  one — just 
one — fixed  idea.  Mr.  Galsworthy  always  deals 
with  a  man  who  is  in  love  with  some  other 
man's  wife;  and  his  world  is  thereby  nar 
rowed.  Mr.  Wells  is  interested  in  a  good  many 
things,  and  his  politics  are  not  purely  phil 
anthropic  as  most  of  our  novelists'  politics 
are.  But  Mr.  Wells's  heroes,  even  when  they 
are  fairly  fortunate,  are  pre-occupied  with  their 
own  notions  of  sociological  duty,  even  more 
than  they  are  pre-occupied  with  passion,  though 
their  passion  is  "special"  enough  when  it 
comes.  Would  any  one  except  a  Wells  hero 
take  a  trip  to  India  and  come  away  having 
[112] 


FASHIONS  IN  MEN 


seen  nothing  but  the  sweat-shops  of  Bombay? 
Always  the  author's  sympathy  is  with  the 
under  dog;  whether  it  is  Kipps  or  Mr.  Polly 
living  out  his  long  foredoomed  existence,  or 
George  Ponderevo  analyzing  Bladesover  with 
diabolic  keenness  and  aching  contempt.  "I'm  a 
spiritual  guttersnipe  in  love  with  unimaginable 
goddesses,"  says  Ponderevo  in  a  burst  of 
frankness.  There  you  have  the  Wells  hero  to 
the  life.  And  Mr.  Bennett's  people  are  only 
spiritual  guttersnipes  who  are  not  in  love  with 
unimaginable  goddesses. 

The  point  is  that  the  guttersnipe  is  having 
his  turn  in  fiction :  if  our  American  heroes  are 
not  guttersnipes  themselves,  it  is  their  sign  of 
grace  to  be  supremely  interested  in  gutter 
snipes.  In  one  way  or  the  other,  the  gutter 
snipe  must  have  his  proper  prominence.  Of 
course,  there  are  differences  and  degrees:  a 
few  heroes  get  no  nearer  the  lower  classes 
than  a  passionate  desire  for  reform  tickets  and 
municipal  sanitation.  But  ordinarily  they  must 
go  through  Ernest  Pontifex's  state  of  believing 
that  poor  people  are  not  only  more  important, 
but  in  every  way  way  nicer  than  rich  people; 
and  few  of  them  go  back  utterly  on  that 
belief,  as  Ernest  did.  Perhaps  that,  more  than 
anything  else,  marks  the  change  of  fashion  in 
men.  For  gentlemen  were  always,  in  their  way, 
benevolent;  but  formerly  they  had  not  achieved 
the  paradox  that  the  object  of  benevolence  is 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


ex  officio  more  interesting  than  the  bestower. 

I  said  earlier  that  in  life,  as  well  as  in 
literature,  men  had  changed.  One's  instances, 
obviously,  must  be  from  books,  and  not  from 
one's  acquaintance;  but  I  spoke  truth.  Philan 
thropy  is  the  latest  social  ladder,  but  it  would 
not  be  so  if  the  people  on  the  top  rung  were 
not  interested  in  philanthropy.  There  has  been, 
for  whatever  reason,  a  tremendous  spurt  of 
interest  in  sociological  questions.  Our  hard- 
headed  young  men,  of  high  ideals,  find  them 
selves  fighting,  of  necessity,  on  a  different 
battlefield  from  any  that  strategists  would  have 
chosen  thirty  years  ago.  Moreover,  philan 
thropy  being  woman's  way  into  politics,  women 
have  been  giving  their  calm,  or  hysterical, 
attention  to  problems  which,  thirty  years  since, 
did  not,  as  problems,  exist  for  them.  I  said 
that  the  change  of  taste  in  women  would  prob 
ably  account  for  much  of  the  change  of  fashion 
in  men.  A  schoolmate  of  mine,  writing  me 
some  years  since  of  her  engagement,  said  (in 
nearly  these  words),  "He  is  tremendously  in 
terested  in  city  missionary  work;  it  wouldn't 
have  been  quite  perfect  if  we  hadn't  had  that 
in  common."  Both  were  spoiled  darlings  of 
fortune,  but  the  statement  was  quite  sincere. 
Undoubtedly,  without  that,  it  would  not  have 
been  "quite  perfect"  in  the  eyes  of  either. 

The  mere  conversation  of  the  marriageable 
young  has  changed  past  belief.  "Social  service" 


FASHIONS  IN  MEN 


has  usurped  so  many  subjects!  Have  many 
people  stopped  to  realize,  I  wonder,  how  com 
pletely  the  psychological  novel  and  the  "prob 
lem"  play  (in  the  old  sense)  have  gone  out  of 
date?  The  psychology  of  hero  and  heroine, 
their  emotional  attitudes  to  each  other,  are 
largely  worked  out  now  in  terms  of  their  atti 
tudes  to  impersonal  questions,  their  religious 
or  their  sociological  "principles."  The  indi 
vidual  personal  reaction  counts  less  and  less. 
If  they  agree  on  the  same  panacea  for  the 
social  evils,  the  author  can  usually  patch  up  a 
passion  sufficient  for  them  to  marry  on.  Gone, 
for  the  most  part,  are  the  pages  of  intimate 
analysis.  No  intimate  analysis  is  needed  any 
longer.  As  for  the  "problem  play,"  we  have 
it  still  with  us,  but  in  another  form.  The  Doll's 
House  and  The  Second  Mrs.  Tanqueray  are 
both  antiquated :  we  do  not  call  a  drama  a  prob 
lem  play  now  unless  it  preaches  a  new  kind  of 
legislation.  And  as  for  sex — in  its  finer  aspects 
it  no  longer  interests  us. 

There  was  a  great  deal  more  sex,  in  its 
subtler  manifestations,  in  the  old  novels  and 
plays,  than  in  the  new  ones.  Not  so  long  ago, 
a  novel  was  a  love-story;  and  it  was  of  su 
preme  importance  to  a  hero  whether  or  not  he 
could  make  the  heroine  care  for  him.  It  was 
also  of  supreme  importance  to  the  heroine. 
The  romance  was  all  founded  on  sex;  and  yet 
sex  was  hardly  mentioned.  Our  heroes  and 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


heroines  still  marry;  but  when  they  consider 
sex  at  all,  they  are  apt  to  consider  it  biologic 
ally,  not  romantically.  We,  as  a  public,  are 
more  frankly  interested  in  sex  than  ever;  but 
we  think  of  it  objectively,  and  a  little  brutally, 
in  terms  of  demand  and  supply.  And  so  we  get 
often  the  pathetic  spectacle  of  the  hero  and 
heroine  having  no  time  to  make  love  to  each 
other  in  the  good  old-fashioned  way,  because 
they  are  so  busy  suppressing  the  red-light  dis 
trict  and  compiling  statistics  of  disease.  Much 
of  the  frankness,  doubtless,  is  a  good  thing; 
but,  beyond  a  doubt,  it  has  cheapened  passion. 
For  passion  among  civilized  people  is  a  subtle 
thing;  it  is  wrapped  about  with  dreams  and 
imaginings,  and  can  bring  human  beings  to 
salvation  as  well  as  to  perdition.  But  when  it 
is  shown  to  us  as  the  mere  province  of  cour 
tesans,  small  wonder  that  we  turn  from  it  to 
the  hero  who  will  have  difficulty  in  feeling-  or 
inspiring  it.  Especially  since  we  are  told,  at 
the  same  time,  that  even  the  courtesan  plies 
her  trade  only  from  direst  necessity. 

After  all,  the  only  safe  person  to  fall  in  love 
with  nowadays  is  a  reformer:  socially,  finan 
cially,  and  sentimentally.  And  most  women,  at 
least,  could  (if  they  would)  say  with  the  Prin- 
cesse  Mathilde,  "Je  n'aime  que  les  romans 
dont  je  voudrais  etre  I'heroi'ne."  Certainly, 
unless  for  some  special  reason,  no  novel  of 
which  one  would  not  like  to  be  the  heroine — in 

[116] 


FASHIONS  IN  MEN 


love  with  the  hero — will  reach  the  hundred 
thousand  mark.  If  there  are  any  of  us  left  who 
regret  the  gentlemen  of  old — who  still  prefer 
our  Darcy  or  even  our  Plantagenet  Palliser — 
we  must  write  our  own  novels,  and  divine  our 
own  heroes  under  the  protective  coloring  of 
their  conventional  breeding.  For  they  are  not 
being  "featured,"  at  present,  either  in  life  or 
in  literature. 


THE  NEWEST  WOMAN 

rwas  the  late  George  Meredith,  if  I  mis- 
ake  not,  who  was  credited  with  bringing 
women  into  their  joint  inheritance  of  wit 
and  passion.  He  himself  supposed  himself  to 
discard,  first  of  the  novelists,  the  "veiled  vir 
ginal  doll."  The  jeune  file  had,  in  the  course 
of  the  late  eighteenth  and  early  nineteenth 
centuries,  become  somewhat  dehumanized.  She 
was  far,  indeed,  from  the  frank  heroines  of 
Shakespeare,  to  whom  every  year  was  leap 
year.  The  heroine  of  the  old-fashioned  senti 
mental  novel  forsook  her  blushing,  fainting, 
tear-shedding,  letter-writing  girlhood,  only  to 
become,  on  her  wedding  day,  the  British  ma 
tron.  There  seems  to  have  been  no  transition. 
Meredith  apparently  felt  that  the  feminine 
share  in  romance  was  deplorably  and  inaccu 
rately  minimized.  He  exaggerated,  perhaps. 
Scott  gave  us  a  few  fine  examples  of  the  beau 
tiful  girl  without  frill  or  flutter,  who  was 
aware  of  her  own  mind.  George  Eliot  knew  a 
thing  or  two  about  her  sex;  and  Jane  Eyre,  in 
her  day,  was  notoriously  explicit. 

Not  long  since,  indeed,  having  brought  my 
self  quite  up  to  date  with  the  fiction  of  the 
contemporary  English  school — even  to  the 

[118] 


THE  NEWEST  WOMAN 


last  instalments  of  its  serial  novels — I  sought 
out  the  most  demode  of  the  English  novelists. 
"Let  me  see,"  I  murmured  to  myself,  "just 
what  it  is  that  we  have  thought  it  worth  while, 
at  this  expense,  to  escape."  Accordingly,  I  pro 
cured  all  the  volumes  of  Sir  Charles  Grandi- 
son.  Nothing,  it  seemed,  could  be  fairer  than 
to  go  to  Richardson;  and,  in  all  the  work  of 
Richardson,  fairest,  surely,  to  go  to  Sir  Charles. 

I  have  never  known  any  one  who  was 
ashamed  to  confess  that  Sir  Charles  Grandi- 
son  bored  him.  It  is  the  last  work  which  any 
defender  of  the  old  school  of  fiction  would 
think  of  using  as  a  basis  for  argument.  And 
yet,  even  in  that  epic  of  priggery,  the  natural 
note  is  not  wholly  lacking.  Harriet  Byron 
loved  Sir  Charles  while  he  was  still  bound  to 
the  Lady  Clementina,  and  bore  herself  with 
dignity  when  her  friends  cautioned  her  against 
her  own  feeling.  "If  this  should  end  at  last  in 
love"  (she  writes),  "and  I  should  be  entangled 
in  a  hopeless  passion,  the  object  of  it  would  be 
Sir  Charles  Grandison :  he  could  not  insult  me ; 
and  mean  as  the  word  pity  in  some  cases 
sounds,  I  had  rather  have  his  pity  than  the 
love  of  any  other  man."  Such  a  cry,  even 
Richardson,  with  all  his  prurient  prudishness, 
could  give  us. 

Yet  we  must  give  Meredith  his  due;  and 
Meredith,  on  the  whole,  honestly  surpasses 
these  others  in  the  shining  list  of  his  adoring 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


heroines — adoring  with  such  dominance  in 
meekness,  such  gayety  in  surrender.  Rose  Joce- 
lyn,  Henrietta  Fakenham,  Aminta  Farrell, 
Clare  Doria  Forey  (let  us  write  it  in  full,  for 
so  she  liked  it  best),  Cecilia  Halkett,  Janet 
Ilchester — it  would  be  hard  to  match,  within 
the  century,  that  group  of  girls. 

All  these  names  have  been  recalled  simply 
as  witnesses  to  the  fact  that  there  is — in  spite 
of  the  contentions  of  the  contemporary  novel 
ists — a  perfectly  consistent  tradition,  in  Eng 
lish  novels,  of  the  frank  young  woman.  It  is  of 
the  first  importance  to  establish  this,  for  these 
contemporary  authors  are  talking  as  if  their 
Anns  and  Isabels  and  Hildas  were  the  only 
jeunes  files  who  had  ever  dared,  in  literature, 
to  love  as  spirited  girls  in  life  really  do.  Just 
here  one  quarrels  with  their  pretensions.  The 
Victorian  convention  may  have  given  us  Ame 
lia  Sedley,  and  Lucy  Desborough,  and  Lily 
Dale;  but  the  Victorian  era  gave  us  also 
Catherine  Earnshaw,  and  Jane  Eyre,  and 
Eustacia  Vye.  Our  contemporaries  are  doing 
nothing  new  when  they  show  us  the  jeune  file 
falling  in  love  before  she  is  proposed  to;  they 
are  doing  nothing  new  when  they  show  us  the 
jeune  file  wishing,  quite  specifically,  to  be  a 
wife;  they  are  not  even  doing  anything  new — 
rather,  something  quite  dix-huitieme  and  ro 
coco — when  they  show  us  the  jeune  file  con 
sidering  whether  she  will  put  up  with  being  a 
[  120] 


THE  NEWEST  WOMAN 


mistress.  The  jeune  file  glorying  in  her  choice 
of  the  illicit  relation  is  something,  let  us  grant 
them,  more  nearly  new.  Yet  how  they  gabble, 
upon  their  peak  in  Darien! 

No;  these  authors  have  not  broken  with  the 
Victorian  convention  —  that  simple  acrobatic 
feat  demanded  of  all  beginners.  But  they  have 
broken  with  the  laboratory  method.  If  they 
think  that  in  Ann  Veronica,  in  Hilda  Lessways, 
in  Isabel  Rivers,  they  have  been  more  accurate 
than  their  great  predecessors,  they  are  quite 
simply  mistaken.  I  am  not  proposing  to  myself, 
or  to  any  one  else,  to  be  shocked  by  these 
young  women.  Being  shocked  leaves  one,  in 
the  world  of  criticism,  with  no  retort.  Whether 
or  not  one  is  shocked  by  them  is  quite  another 
question,  and  one  that  does  not  come  into  this 
discussion.  My  own  objection  to  the  school  of 
Mr.  Shaw,  Mr.  Wells,  and  Mr.  Bennett,  is 
that  their  heroines  are  not  convincing. 

There  is  a  great  deal  said  and  written,  now 
adays,  about  women  as  they  are  and  as  they 
ought  to  be;  and  very  little  of  it  is  in  the  tone 
of  Sesame  and  Lilies.  We  are  told  very  con 
tradictory  things  about  our  sex;  and  we  are 
exhorted  with  unvarying  earnestness  to  believe 
each  contradiction.  We  are  jeered  at  for  being 
Nietzschean  Anns,  embodying  the  ruthless  life- 
force,  pursuing  the  man  that  we  may  have 
children  by  him.  We  are  also  preached  at  for 
causing  race-suicide.  We  must  want  children 
[121] 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


more  than  anything  else  in  the  world;  and  we 
must  want  the  state  to  take  care  of  them  for 
us  after  they  are  born.  We  must  return  to  the 
Stone  Age;  and  we  must,  at  the  same  time, 
join  the  Fabian  Society.  We  must  submit  to 
the  intense  conservatism  of  eugenics;  but  we 
must,  on  the  other  hand,  insult  Mrs.  Grundy, 
whenever  we  find  it  convenient,  by  taking 
lovers  instead  of  husbands.  We  ought  not  to 
marry  without  assurance  that  our  children  will 
be  physically  perfect;  but  we  may  not  expose 
them  on  a  mountain  top  if  by  any  chance  they 
are  not. 

Only  the  pragmatist  (be  it  said  in  passing), 
with  his  avowed  power  of  sucking  the  truth 
simultaneously  from  two  mutually  exclusive 
hypotheses,  could  do  all  the  things  that,  with 
authority,  we  are  told  to  do.  "Modern,  indeed! 
She"  (Ann  Veronica)  uwas  going  to  be  as 
primordial  as  chipped  flint."  Yet,  if  we  accept 
the  chronologies  of  history  (which  seems  sane 
enough)  nothing  could  be  more  "modern"  than 
Ann  Veronica's  way  of  being  pre-historic.  Per 
haps  the  solution  is  for  all  women  to  become 
pragmatists?  Some  of  us  are  bewildered  by  all 
this;  and  we  wonder  a  little  if  the  heart-break 
ing  medley  of  preachments  is  not  the  fruit  of 
that  antique  and  unpardonable  sin — meter  les 
genres.  In  all  this  chaos,  one  thing  seems  to  be 
generally  agreed  on:  women  are,  contrary  to 
fusty  tradition,  very  like  men — whether  like 

[122] 


THE  NEWEST  WOMAN 


them  according  to  UAge  Dangereux,  or  like 
them  according  to  the  latest  suffrage  pamphlet. 
That  is  the  only  thing  that  we  shall  unfailingly 
be  told. 

There  is  something  in  it.  We  are  more  like 
men  than  Mrs.  Radcliffe  would  have  believed. 
But  the  method  chosen  by  these  modern  hero 
ines  of  being  like  men  is  chiefly,  it  would 
appear,  to  be  more  so.  They  will  not  go  half 
way,  but  three  quarters.  The  old-fashioned 
man  sometimes  relented.  The  new-fashioned 
woman  makes  quick  work  of  her  lover's  virtue. 
There  is  hardly  a  villain  in  an  old  play  but 
would  have  let  the  lady  off,  if  she  had  pleaded 
with  him  as  Capes  pleads  with  Ann  Veronica. 
The  qualms,  the  scruples,  the  regrets,  are  all 
the  man's :  the  girl  refuses  utterly  to  indulge  in 
anything  so  weak.  Capes  is  unfortunate  enough 
to  say  something  to  Ann  Veronica  about  honor. 
"Only  your  queer  code  of  honor — Honor! 
Once  you  begin  with  love  you  have  to  see  it 
through."  Away  with  inhibitions! 

"But,"  some  one  will  object,  "all  this  has 
been  said  before.  And  literature  is  full  of 
women  who  prey  passionately  on  the  men  they 
say  they  love.  They  are  a  recognized  type." 
Granted;  but  until  now,  the  passionate  preying 
and  the  unsought  soliciting  have  not  been  done 
by  the  young  unmarried  girl  of  respectable 
traditions.  The  type  is  represented,  from  Poti- 
phar's  wife  down,  by  the  woman  who  is  no 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


longer  jeune  fille.  One  has  not  traversed  either 
literature  or  life  without  hearing  of  exceptions. 
But  they  are  exceptions.  The  point  is,  not  that 
young  women  have  hitherto  been  restrained  by 
religion  and  convention,  and  that  when  they 
become  free-thinkers  and  despise  the  existing 
order,  they  express  themselves  as  they  really 
are.  The  point  is  that  they  really  are  not,  for 
the  most  part,  like  Ann  Veronica  and  Hilda 
Lessways. 

I  and  my  friends  do  not  object  to  Ann  and 
Hilda  because  we  are  afraid  that,  if  we  do 
not,  people  will  think  that  we  are  like  that. 
We  object  to  them  because  we  are  told  that 
they  are  normal,  healthy-minded  young  women 
who  have  led  perfectly  respectable  lives  on 
the  borders,  at  least,  of  gentility;  and  because 
we  know  that  normal,  healthy-minded  young 
women  who  have  lived  such  lives  do  not  ap 
proach  their  first  love  affairs  in  the  temper  of 
these  heroines.  If  you  wish  to  say  that  the 
authors  are  merely  discussing  pathological 
cases,  you  will  to  some  extent  be  letting  them 
out,  but  they  will  not  thank  you  for  it.  What 
is  perfectly  clear  is  that  they  believe  girls  of 
eighteen  or  twenty  are  like  that.  The  last  thing 
that  they  think,  evidently,  is  that  these  young 
ladies  need  any  attention  from  physicians  or 
alienists.  They  think — God  save  the  mark! — 
that  they  have  described,  in  each  case,  a  really 


THE  NEWEST  WOMAN 


nice  girl.  Up  to  a  certain  point,  Ann  Veronica 
M  nice.  When  she  falls  in  love,  her  author  goes 
back  on  her  disgracefully.  He  does  not  go  back 
on  her  by  making  her  horrid :  he  goes  back  on 
her  by  destroying  her  actuality. 

One  is  ready  to  grant,  I  say,  that  women  are 
more  like  men  than  some — not  all — of  the 
old-fashioned  novelists  would  have  had  us 
believe.  Let  us  rail,  by  all  means,  at  the  "veiled 
virginal  doll."  Let  us  disagree  with  Tolstoi 
(it  is  always  good  to  disagree  with  Tolstoi!) 
when  he  says,  in  the  Sonate  de  Kreutzer, 
"une  jeune  fille  pure  ne  veut  pas  un  amant; 
elle  veut  des  enfants."  Let  us  admit  that  the 
modern  girl  really  is  frank  with  herself  about 
her  desire  to  marry  the  man  she  has  chosen. 
Indeed,  I  cannot  think  who  will  deny  it.  But 
there  our  respect  for  realism  bids  us  stop.  It 
is  a  complex  and  misty  matter,  this  probing  of 
the  young  girl's  secret  attitude  to  life  and  her 
lover. 

Perhaps  the  greatest  blunder  of  the  new 
realists  is  that  they  do  not  see  how  complex 
and  misty  it  is.  The  whole  question  is  almost 
impossible  of  discussion,  it  is  so  difficult  and 
delicate.  Record  the  images  in  the  girl's  mind, 
if  you  must — that  is  the  exhaustive,  exhausting 
rule  of  realism.  But  for  God's  sake,  record 
them  as  vague,  since  vague  they  are!  These 
authors  fail,  precisely  because  they  must,  at 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


each  instant,  be  vivid.  One  is  tempted  to 
recall  to  them  Mr.  Chesterton's  difficulty  with 
Browning's  biography:  "One  can  make  a  map 
of  a  labyrinth,  but  who  can  make  a  map  of  a 
mist?"  Mr.  Wells  and  Mr.  Bennett  are,  appar 
ently,  the  successful  cabmen  who  can.  They 
offer  to  take  you  anywhere  you  like  in  this 
London  fog  of  the  girl's  mind.  Under  their 
fitful  guidance,  you  will  get  somewhere;  but  it 
may  not  be  the  address  you  gave  them. 

It  is  time  to  come  to  instances.  Luckily  for 
one's  contention,  the  frank  young  feminine 
thing  is,  in  spite  of  a  few  sentimental  aberra 
tions  of  a  century  ago,  in  the  great  English 
literary  tradition.  (What  the  new  novelists 
have  given  us,  one  might  remark,  is  more  like 
the  frank  young  thing  crossed  with  the  high 
wayman.)  No  one  need  be  more  explicit  than 
Juliet  in  desiring  possession  of  the  man  she 
loves,  but  even  Juliet  does  not  find  her  passion 
for  Romeo  summing  itself  up  in  Ann  Veron 
ica's  desire  to  kiss  her  idol's  feet  because  she 
is  sure  that  they  must  have  the  firm  texture  of 
his  hands;  nor  is  she  overpowered  at  every 
turn,  like  Hilda,  by  his  "faint,  exciting,  mascu 
line  odor."  And,  surely,  if  any  one  were  to 
bring  up  an  explicit  heroine,  it  would  be  the 
Nurse!  Romantic  lovers  have  always  prayed 
for  union.  Long  since,  Sir  Thomas  Browne  said, 
"United  souls  are  not  satisfied  with  embraces, 
but  desire  to  be  truly  each  other;  which,  being 


THE  NEWEST  WOMAN 


impossible,  their  desires  are  infinite,  and  must 
proceed  without  a  possibility  of  satisfaction." 
What  lover  has  not  known  that  hurt?  What 
lover,  man  or  woman,  has  not  welcomed  mar 
riage,  and,  at  the  same  time,  thought  it  a  pis- 
aller?  The  notion  is  not  a  new  one.  It  has 
never  been  in  the  greatest  tradition  of  poetry 
or  of  life  for  the  woman  who  loves  to  hold 
back. 

That  is  not  our  quarrel  with  these  misrepre 
sented  heroines.  Our  quarrel  with  them  is  that, 
being  misrepresented  themselves,  they  misrep 
resent  their  prototypes.  It  is  a  matter  chiefly, 
perhaps,  of  the  actual  content  of  their  minds. 
The  visions  of  experience  are  not  the  visions 
of  inexperience;  moreover,  there  is  not  one 
frank  young  thing  in  ten  thousand  who  does 
not  wrap  her  ardor  in  a  blessed  cloak  of 
vagueness.  She  may  laugh  at  her  faint  ata 
vistic  shiver;  but  she  feels  it.  She  may  im 
mensely  like  the  feeling  of  her  lover's  arms 
about  her;  but  she  does  not  instinctively  set 
herself  to  imagining  details  that  only  the  slow 
processes  of  intimacy  will  normally  familiarize 
her  with.  She  may  glory  in  his  total  effect  of 
physical  perfection;  but  she  does  not  go  over 
his  "points,"  as  if  she  were  buying  a  horse,  or 
drawing  an  athlete  in  a  life-class.  Imagine 
Chaucer's  feelings,  if  any  one  had  tried  to 
confound  Emilye  with  the  Wife  of  Bath!  Yet 
it  is  something  very  like  that  which  Mr.  Ben- 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


net  has  done  in  his  analysis  of  Hilda's  psychol 
ogy  during  the  momentous  half-hour  before 
she  becomes  engaged  to  Cannon. 

"But  at  the  same  time  she  was  in  the  small 
hot  room,  and  both  George  Cannon's  hands 
were  on  her  unresisting  shoulders;  and  then 
they  were  round  her,  and  she  felt  his  physical 
nearness,  the  texture  of  his  coat  and  of  his 
skin;  she  could  see  in  a  mist  the  separate  hairs 
of  his  tremendous  moustache  and  the  colors 
swimming  in  his  eyes;  her  nostrils  expanded  in 
alarm  to  a  faint  exciting  masculine  odor.  She 
was  disconcerted,  if  not  panicstruck,  by  the  vio 
lence  of  his  first  kiss;  but  her  consternation 
was  delectable  to  her." 

Every  woman  and  most  men  know,  I  fancy, 
that  if  Hilda's  first  proximity  to  the  man  who 
dominated  her  imagination  was  of  precisely  that 
nature,  her  reaction  was  probably  not  precisely 
of  that  sort.  Even  the  impersonal  machinery  of 
the  psychological  laboratory  would  have  regis 
tered  in  her  a  distinct  recoil.  The  microscope 
is  not,  and  never  has  been,  the  lover's  favorite 
instrument.  It  is  doubtful  if  even  the  man  him 
self  would  have  been  allured  by  the  accurate 
and  intimate  perception  of  the  coarseness  of 
his  beloved's  skin.  One  thinks  a  little,  in  spite 
of  one's  self,  of  Gulliver  and  Glumdalclitch. 
Certain  it  is — and  rather  amusing,  all  things 
considered — that  none  of  the  men  in  these  nov 
els  indulges  in  the  sensations  that  crowd  the 


THE  NEWEST  WOMAN 


heroines'  hours;  though  it  is  written  of  nearly 
all  the  heroes  that  they  had  experienced  matri 
mony,  at  the  least.  May  it  not  be  that  the 
authors  know  their  own  sex  better  than  ours? 
Granted  that  women  are  very  like  men:  can 
one  justly,  on  that  hypothesis,  show  them  as 
more  scornful  of  conventions,  of  codes  of 
honor,  of  every  reticence,  moral,  intellectual, 
and  physical,  than  these  men  whom  they  con 
sider  their  masters?  It  is  in  each  case  the  man 
who  has  the  bad  quarters  of  an  hour  over  their 
common  breaches,  real  or  fancied,  of  loyalty 
and  decency  and  public  opinion;  the  man  who 
has,  for  his  own  peace,  to  find  a  philosophy 
that  justifies  them  both. 

These  authors  are  not  alone  among  con 
temporaries  in  recording  such  heightened  mo 
ments  of  a  girl's  life.  One  calls  to  mind,  for 
the  sheer  similarity  of  the  mental  plight,  Eliza 
beth,  in  The  Iron  Woman.  Thus  Elizabeth 
writes  to  David: 

"  'Dear'  (she  stopped  to  kiss  the  paper), 
'dear,  I  hope  you  won't  burn  it  up  because  I 
am  tired  of  waiting,  and  I  hope  you  are  too' ; — 
when  she  wrote  those  last  words,  she  was  sud 
denly  shy;  'Uncle  is  to  give  me  the  money  on 
my  birthday — let  us  be  married  that  day.  I 
want  to  be  married.  I  am  all  yours,  David,  all 
my  soul,  and  all  my  mind,  and  all  my  body.  I 
have  nothing  that  is  not  yours  to  take;  so  the 
money  is  yours.  No,  I  will  not  even  give  it  to 
[•139] 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


you !  it  belongs  to  you  already — as  I  do.  Dear, 
come  and  take  it — and  me.  I  love  you — love 
you — love  you.  /  want  you  to  take  me.  I  want 
to  be  your  wife.  Do  you  understand  ?  I  want 
to  belong  to  you.  I  am  yours.' 

"So  she  tried,  this  untutored  creature,  to 
put  her  soul  and  body  into  words,  to  write  the 
thing  that  cannot  even  be  spoken,  whose  utter 
ance  is  silence." 

There  is  no  need  to  follow  further  Mrs. 
Deland's  analysis  of  the  situation:  the  proud 
and  practical  reply  from  David,  which  the  girl 
considers  a  rebuff;  her  sudden  marrying  of  the 
man  she  does  not  love — as  sheer  expression  of 
outraged  modesty,  and  recoil  from  the  man 
who  had  not  known  how  to  treat  her  confession. 
There  would  be  no  wisdom  in  comparing  The 
Iron  Woman,  from  any  other  point  of  view, 
with  the  novels  we  have  been  mentioning.  This 
one  episode  is  interesting  simply  as  a  different 
and  more  convincing  record  of  the  frank  young 
thing's  relation  to  her  own  frankness,  and  of 
the  fiery  limits  of  that  frankness;  pages  of 
racking  accuracy,  in  which  the  girl  nearly  dies 
of  the  memory  of  her  own  explicitness.  One 
has  not  even  power  to  protest  against  Eliza 
beth's  tragic  and  foolish  act  in  marrying  Blair; 
it  follows  upon  that  mood  with  the  raw  inev 
itability  of  life. 

Some  adherents  of  the  new  school  may 
think  it  indelicate  to  base  a  general  accusation 


THE  NEWEST  WOMAN 


on  the  single  point  of  the  heroine's  psychology. 
In  the  first  place,  the  accusation  is  not  so  gen 
eral  as  to  preclude  very  definite  admiration  of 
other  aspects  of  the  school's  achievement. 
There  is  much  in  Mr.  Wells's  New  Machiavelli 
besides  the  hero's  affair  with  Isabel  Rivers; 
much  that  goes  to  the  mind  and  heart  of 
all  of  us.  As  for  effectiveness  of  method  and 
brilliancy  of  style — one  simply  does  not  see  the 
need  of  adding  one  piping  voice  to  the  har 
monious  and  already  deafening  chorus.  Were 
there  the  need,  one  would  do  it. 

But  the  contemporary  school  has  set  out  to 
"do"  a  new  type  of  woman:  a  type  which  it 
considers  important,  if  not  dominant.  It  has 
even  the  air  of  saying:  "This  is  the  kind  of  girl 
with  whom  intelligent  men  in  the  immediate 
future  will  have  overwhelmingly  (and  to 
their  salvation !)  to  deal.  Behold  the  Newest 
Woman/' 

The  crux  in  each  book,  for  the  average 
reader,  is  the  maturing  of  the  relation  between 
the  man  and  the  girl.  The  girl  exists  only,  in 
spite  of  her  intellectual  qualities,  for  the  sake 
of  that  relation.  In  each  case,  she  is  the  ideal 
mate,  the  high  exponent  of  her  sex.  She  de 
serves,  and  must  bear,  serious  consideration 
from  every  point  of  view.  One  has  chosen  the 
realistic  point  of  view  because  realism  is  the 
method  these  authors  abide  by.  They  aim  at 
telling  the  truth  as  it  is;  therefore,  they  stand 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


or  fall  by  the  accuracy  of  their  vivid  and  multi 
tudinous  detail.  We  are  not  in  the  pulpit,  but 
in  the  laboratory.  One's  honest  impression  is 
that  the  scientific  observers  have  mixed  their 
slides. 

It  is  one  thing  to  make  your  heroine  believe 
in  free  love — doubtless  many  women  do.  It  is 
pardonable  to  science  to  exhibit  exceptions  to 
the  feminine  rule,  in  the  person  of  the  girl 
initially  over-sexed  or  neurotic:  such  cases  are 
known  to  other  scientists  than  these.  But  it  is 
quite  another  thing  to  insist  on  the  niceness, 
the  normality,  the  uninterruptedly  respectable 
and  uneventful  breeding  of  a  girl — to  exhibit 
her  as  the  type,  in  other  words — and  then 
credit  her  with  reactions  that  do  not  belong  to 
the  type. 

There  is  no  point  in  preaching  against  a 
modern  spirit  that  is  going  to  develop  Anns 
and  Hildas  and  Isabels  ad  libitum.  The  con 
ception  of  them  as  heroines  may  be  a  sign  of 
the  times;  but  they  themselves  are  not  yet 
numerous  enough  to  be  a  sign  of  the  times.  It 
is  even  doubtful  if  novelists  can  do  in  a  decade 
what  Nature  has  never  shown  any  sign  of 
doing  in  all  her  lazy  evolutionary  progress: 
completely  alter  natural  feminine  instincts. 
"But  the  worst  of  Ann  Veronica  is  that  she's 
there!"  a  friend  complained  to  me,  not  long 
since.  Everything  has  always  been  there,  one 
fancies.  All  one  insists  on  is  that  neither  Ann 


THE  NEWEST  WOMAN 


Veronica  nor  Hilda  Lessways  is  the  normal 
representative  of  the  sex.  About  the  morality 
of  Mr.  Wells's  and  Mr.  Bennett's  books,  there 
are  probably  a  hundred  opinions.  One's  own 
present  quarrel  with  them  is  not  that  they  are 
bad  morals,  but  that  they  are  bad  biology. 


TABU  AND  TEMPERAMENT 

WHEN,  I  wonder,  did  the  word  "tem 
perament"  come  into  fashion  with  us  ? 
We  can  hardly  have  got  it  from  the 
French,  for  the  French  mean  by  it  something 
very  different  from  what  we  do;  though  it  is 
just  possible  that  we  did  get  it  from  them,  and 
have  merely  Bowdlerized  the  term.  At  all 
events,  whatever  it  stands  for,  it  long  since 
became  a  great  social  asset  for  women,  and  a 
great  social  excuse  for  men.  Perhaps  it  came  in 
when  we  discovered  that  artists  were  human 
beings.  At  least,  for  many  years,  we  never 
praised  an  artist  without  using  the  word.  It 
does  not  necessarily  imply  "charm,"  for  people 
have  charm  irrespective  of  temperament,  and 
temperament  irrespective  of  charm.  It  is  some 
thing  that  the  Philistine  never  has:  that  we 
know.  But  what,  by  all  the  gods  of  clarity,  does 
it  mean  ? 

It  means,  I  fancy,  in  one  degree  or  another, 
the  personal  revolt  against  convention.  The 
individual  who  was  "different,"  who  did  not 
let  his  inhibitions  interfere  with  his  epigrams, 
who  was  not  afraid  to  express  himself,  who 
hated  cliches  of  every  kind — how  well  we  know 
that  figure  in  motley,  who  turned  every  occa- 

1 134 1 


TABU  AND  TEMPERAMENT 

sion  into  a  fancy-dress  ball !  All  the  inconve 
nient  things  he  did  were  forgiven  him,  for  the 
sake  of  the  amusing  things  he  said.  Indeed,  we 
hardly  stopped  to  realize  that  his  fascination 
was  largely  a  matter  of  vocabulary.  Now  it  is 
one  thing  to  sow  your  wild  oats  in  talk,  and 
quite  another  to  live  by  your  own  kaleidoscopic 
paradoxes.  The  people  who  frowned  on  the 
manifestations  of  "temperament"  were  merely 
those  logical  creatures  who  believed  that  if  you 
expressed  your  opinions  regardless  of  other 
people's  feelings,  you  probably  meant  what  you 
said.  They  did  not  know  the  pathology  of  epi 
gram,  the  basic  truth  of  which  is  that  word- 
intoxicated  people  express  an  opinion  long  be 
fore  they  dream  of  holding  it.  They  say  what 
they  think,  whether  they  think  it  or  not.  Only, 
if  you  talk  with  incessant  variety  about  what 
ought  to  be  done,  and  then  never  do  any  of  the 
wild  things  you  recommend,  you  become  in  the 
end  perfectly  powerless  as  a  foe  of  convention. 
This  tactical  fact  the  unconventional  folk 
have  at  last  become  aware  of;  and,  accord 
ingly,  hostility  to  convention  is  ceasing  some 
what  to  take  itself  out  in  phrases.  Conventions, 
at  the  present  moment,  are  really  menaced. 
The  most  striking  sign  of  this  is  that  people 
are  now  making  unconventionality  a  social  vir 
tue,  instead  of  an  unsocial  vice.  The  switches 
have  been  opened,  and  the  laden  trains  must 
take  their  chance  of  a  destination. 

[135] 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


The  praise  of  temperament,  I  verily  believe, 
was  the  entering  wedge.  But  whatever  the  first 
cause,  "conventional"  is  certainly  in  bad  odor 
as  an  epithet.  And  this  is  really  an  interesting 
phenomenon,  worth  investigating.  What  is  it 
that  makes  it  a  term  of  reproach  ?  Why  must 
you  never  say  it  about  your  dearest  friend  ? 
Why  must  you  contradict,  in  a  shocked  tone,  if 
your  dearest  friend  is  said  to  be  conventional  ? 
Most  of  my  best  friends  are  conventional,  I 
am  glad  to  say;  but  even  I  should  never  think 
of  describing  them  to  others  thus. 

Conventional  people  are  supposed  to  lack 
intelligence — the  power  to  think  for  them 
selves.  (It  seems  to  be  pretty  well  taken  for 
granted  that  you  cannot  think  for  yourself,  and 
decide  to  think  what  the  majority  of  your  kind 
thinks.  If  you  agree  with  the  majority,  it  must 
be  because  you  have  no  mental  processes.) 
They  are  felt  to  lack  charm:  to  have  nothing 
unexpected  and  delightful  to  give  you.  And, 
nowadays,  they  are  (paradoxes  are  popular) 
supposed  to  be  perilous  to  society,  because  they 
are  immovable,  because  they  do  not  march  with 
the  times,  because  they  cling  to  conservative 
conceptions  while  the  parties  of  progress  are 
re-making  the  world.  All  these  reproaches  are, 
at  present,  conveyed  in  the  one  word. 

Now  it  is  a  great  mistake  to  confound 
conventionality  with  simplicity — with  that  sim 
plicity  which  indicates  a  brain  inadequate  to 


TABU  AND   TEMPERAMENT 

dealing  with  subtleties;  or  to  confound  "tem 
perament"  and  unconventionality  with  a  highly 
organized  nature.  The  anthropologists  have 
exploded  all  that.  I  have  looked  warily  at 
anthropologists  ever  since  the  day  when  I  went 
to  hear  a  great  Greek  scholar  lecture  on  the 
Iliad,  and  listened  for  an  hour  to  talk  about 
bull-roarers  and  leopard-societies.  I  doubt  if 
the  anthropologists  have  any  more  perspective 
than  other  scientists.  I  am  as  near  being  an  old 
Augustan  as  any  twentieth-century  observer 
can  be:  "nihil  humani,"  etc.  But,  for  God's 
sake,  let  it  be  human !  Palaeontology  is  a  poor 
substitute  for  history.  No:  I  do  not  love  any 
scientists,  even  the  anthropologists.  But  I  do 
think  we  ought  to  be  grateful  to  them  for  prov 
ing  to  us  that  primitive  people  are  a  hundred 
times  as  conventional  as  we;  and  that  their 
codes  are  almost  too  complicated  for  European 
minds  to  master.  If  any  one  is  still  under  the 
dominance  of  Rousseau,  Chateaubriand  et  Cie., 
I  wish  he  would  sit  down  impartially  before 
Messrs.  Spencer  and  Gillen's  exposition  of 
group-marriage  among  the  Australian  aborig 
ines.  If,  in  three  hours,  he  knows  whom,  sup 
posing  he  were  a  Matthurie  of  the  dingo  totem, 
he  could  marry  without  incurring  punishment, 
or  even  the  death  penalty,  he  had  better  take 
his  subtlety  into  Central  Australia:  he  is  quite 
wasted  on  civilization. 

Some  one  may  retort  that  I  am  not  exactly 

[137] 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


making  out  a  shining  case  for  tabu,  in  citing  the 
very  nasty  natives  of  Australia  as  notable  ex 
amples  of  what  tabu  can  do  for  society.  My 
point  is  only  this:  that  it  is  folly  to  chide  con 
ventional  people  for  simplicity,  since  conven 
tion  is  a  very  complicated  thing;  or  for  dulness, 
since  it  takes  a  good  deal  of  intelligence  and  a 
great  many  inhibitions  to  follow  a  social  code. 
To  be  different  from  everyone  else,  you  have 
only  to  shut  your  eyes  and  stop  your  ears,  and 
act  as  your  nervous  system  dictates.  By  that 
uncommonly  easy  means,  you  could  cause  a 
tremendous  sensation  in  any  drawing-room, 
while  your  brain  went  quite  to  sleep.  The 
natives  of  Central  Australia  are  not  nice;  but 
they  are  certainly  nicer  than  they  would  be  if 
they  practised  free  love  all  the  year  round, 
instead  of  on  rigidly  specified  occasions.  Their 
conventions  are  the  only  morality  they  have. 
Some  day,  perhaps,  they  will  do  better.  But  it 
will  not  be  by  forsaking  conventions  altogether. 
For  surely,  in  order  to  be  attractive,  we  must 
have  some  ideals,  and  above  all  some  restraints. 
Civilization  is  merely  an  advance  in  taste: 
accepting,  all  the  time,  nicer  things,  and  reject 
ing  nasty  ones. 

When  the  temperamental  and  unconven 
tional  people  are  not  mere  plagiarists  of  dead 
eccentrics,  they  lack,  in  almost  every  case,  the 
historic  sense.  I  am  far  from  saying  that  all 
conventional  folk  have  it;  but  they  have  at 


TABU  AND   TEMPERAMENT 

least  the  merit  of  conforming.  If  they  do  not 
live  by  their  own  intelligence,  it  is  because  they 
live  by  something  that  they  modestly  value  a 
good  deal  more.  It  is  better  that  a  dull  person 
should  follow  the  herd:  his  initiatives  would 
probably  be  very  painful  to  himself  and  every 
one  else.  No  convention  gets  to  be  a  convention 
at  all  except  by  grace  of  a  lot  of  clever  and 
powerful  people  first  inventing  it,  and  then 
imposing  it  on  others.  You  can  be  pretty  sure, 
if  you  are  strictly  conventional,  that  you  are 
following  genius — a  long  way  off.  And  unless 
you  are  a  genius  yourself,  that  is  a  good  thing 
to  do.  Unless  we  are  geniuses,  the  lone  hunt  is 
not  worth  while:  we  had  better  hunt  with  the 
pack.  Unless  we  are  geniuses,  there  is  much 
more  fun  in  playing  the  game;  there  is  much 
more  fun  in  caste  and  class  and  clan.  Uncon 
ventional  people  are  apt  to  be  Whistlers  who 
cannot  paint.  Of  course  there  is  something 
very  dull  about  the  person  who  cannot  give 
his  reasons  for  his  social  creed.  But  if  it  is  all 
a  question  of  instinct,  better  a  trained  instinct 
than  an  untrained  one.  I  am  inclined  to  think 
that  the  mid-Victorian  prejudice  against — let 
us  say — actors  and  actresses,  was  well  founded. 
Under  Victoria  (or  should  one  say  under  mid- 
Victoria?)  stock  companies  were  not  chaper 
oned,  and  ladies  and  gentlemen  went  on  the 
stage  very  infrequently.  What  is  the  point  of 
admitting  to  your  house  some  one  who  will  be 

[  139] 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


very  uncomfortable  there  himself,  and  who 
will  make  every  one  else  even  more  uncomfort 
able?  It  is  not  that  we  are  afraid  he  will  eat 
with  his  knife:  that  is  a  detail  we  might  put 
up  with.  But  eating  or  not  eating  with  your 
knife  is  merely  one  of  the  little  signs  by  which 
we  infer  other  things.  In  this  mad  world,  any 
one  may  do  or  be  anything;  but  the  man  who 
has  been  brought  up  to  eat  with  his  knife  is  the 
less  likely  to  have  been  brought  up  by  people 
who  would  teach  him  to  respect  a  woman  or 
not  to  break  a  confidence.  It  is  a  stupid  rule  of 
thumb;  but,  after  all,  until  you  know  a  person 
intimately,  how  are  you  going  to  judge  except 
by  such  fallible  means?  I  have  nothing  in  the 
world  against  Nature's  noblemen;  but  the  bur 
den  of  proof  is,  of  practical  necessity,  on  their 
shoulders.  Manners  are  not  morals — precisely; 
yet,  socially  speaking,  both  have  the  same 
basis,  namely,  the  Golden  Rule.  No  one  must 
be  made  more  uncomfortable  or  more  unhappy 
because  he  has  been  with  you.  Now,  in  spite  of 
Oscar,  it  is  worse  to  be  unhappy  than  to  be 
bored;  and  I  would  rather  be  the  heroine  of  a 
not  very  clever  comedy  of  manners  than  of  a 
first-class  tragedy.  Most  of  us,  when  we  are 
once  over  twenty,  are  no  more  histrionic, 
really,  than  that.  The  conventional  person  may 
bore  you  (though  it  is  by  no  means  certain  that 
he  will)  but  he  will  never,  of  his  own  volition, 
make  you  unhappy  unless  by  way  of  justified 

[  140] 


TABU  AND    TEMPERAMENT 

retort.  He  will  never  put  you,  verbally  or  prac 
tically,  into  a  nasty  hole.  Perhaps  he  will  never 
give  you  the  positive  scarlet  joys  of  shock  and 
thrill.  But,  dear  me !  that  brings  us  to  another 
point. 

Conventional  folk  are  often  accused  of  be 
ing  dull  and  valueless  because  they  have  no 
original  opinions.  (How  we  all  love  original 
opinions ! )  Well :  very  few  people  have  any 
original  opinions.  Originality  usually  amounts 
only  to  plagiarizing  something  unfamiliar. 
"The  wildest  dreams  of  Kew  are  the  facts  of 
Khatmandhu";  and  dead  sages,  if  there  were 
only  retroactive  copyrights,  could  sue  most  of 
our  modern  wits  for  their  best  things.  What  is 
even  Jean-Jacques  but  Prometheus-and-water, 
if  it  comes  to  that?  Very  few  people  since 
Aristotle  have  said  anything  new.  What  passes 
for  an  original  opinion  is,  generally,  merely  an 
original  phrase.  Old  lamps  for  new — yes;  but 
it  is  always  the  same  oil  in  the  lamp.  Some 
people — like  G.  B.  S.  and  Mr.  Chesterton — 
seem  to  think  that  you  can  be  original  by  con 
tradicting  other  people — as  if  even  the  person 
who  states  a  proposition  did  not  know  that  you 
could  make  the  verb  negative  if  you  chose! 
Often,  they  are  so  hard  up  that  they  have  to 
contradict  themselves.  But  they  are  supposed 
to  be  violently — subversively — enchantingly — 
original.  Even  the  militant  suffragettes  have 
not  "gone  the  whole  hog" :  they  have  stopped 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


short  of  Aristophanes.  What  is  the  use  of  con 
gratulating  ourselves  on  our  unprecedented 
courage  in  packing  the  house  solemnly  for 
Damaged  Goods,  when  we  have  expurgated 
the  Lysistrata — and  had  the  barest  succes 
d'estime,  at  that?  No:  our  vaunted  unconven- 
tionality  is  usually  a  matter  of  words.  I  have 
tracked  more  than  one  delightful  vocabulary 
through  the  jungle,  only  to  find  that  it  brought 
up  at  the  literal  inspiration  of  the  Old  Testa 
ment;  and  I  have  inwardly  yawned  away  an 
afternoon  with  a  person  who  talked  in  cliches, 
to  discover  perhaps,  at  twilight,  that  on  some 
point  or  other  he  was  startlingly  revolutionary. 
The  fact  is  that  we  are  the  soft  prey  of  the 
phrase;  and  the  rhetoricians,  whether  we  know 
it  or  not,  will  always  have  their  way  with  us. 
Even  the  demagogue  is  only  the  rhetorician  of 
the  gutter.  "Take  care  of  the  sounds  and  the 
sense  will  take  care  of  itself" — as  the  Duchess 
in  Alice  did  not  say.  Dulness  is  a  matter  of 
vocabulary;  but  there  are  no  more  dull  people 
among  the  conventional  than  among  the  uncon 
ventional.  And  if  a  person  is  to  be  unconven 
tional,  he  must  be  amusing  or  he  is  intolerable : 
for,  in  the  nature  of  the  case,  he  guarantees 
you  nothing  but  amusement.  He  does  not  guar 
antee  you  any  of  the  little  amenities  by  which 
society  has  assured  itself  that,  if  it  must  go  to 
sleep,  it  will  at  least  sleep  in  a  comfortable 
chair. 


TABU  AND   TEMPERAMENT 

I  was  arguing  at  luncheon  one  day,  with 
three  clever  women,  the  advantages  and  dis 
advantages  of  unconventionality.  They  were  all 
perfectly  conventional  in  a  worldy  sense,  and 
perfectly  convinced  of  the  charms  of  unconven 
tionality.  (That  is  always  the  way:  we  sigh  for 
the  paradises  that  are  not  ours,  like  good  Chris 
tians  spurning  the  Apocalypse  and  coveting  the 
Mohammedan  heaven.)  They  cited  to  me  a 
very  amusing  person — a  priestess  of  intellec 
tual  revolt.  Yes:  she  walked  thirty  blocks  to 
lunch  in  a  pouring  rain,  and  when  she  came  in 
she  took  off  her  wet  hat,  put  it  in  her  chair, 
and  sat  on  it.  The  fact  that  my  guest,  did  she 
choose,  could  afford  to  crown  herself  with 
pearls,  would  not  make  up  to  me  for  the  con 
sciousness  that  she  was  sitting  on  an  oozing 
hat  throughout  luncheon.  In  spite  of  epigrams, 
I  should  feel,  myself,  perfectly  wet  through. 
Surely  it  is  the  essence  of  good  manners  not  to 
make  other  people  uncomfortable.  Society,  by 
its  insisting  on  conventions,  has  merely  insisted 
on  certain  convenient  signs  by  which  we  may 
know  that  a  man  is  considering,  in  daily  life, 
the  comfort  of  other  people.  No  one  except 
a  reformer  has  a  right  to  batten  on  other 
people's  discomfort.  And  who  would  ever 
have  wanted  John  Knox  to  dinner  ?  To  be  sure, 
we  are  all  a  little  by  way  of  being  reformers 
now — too  much,  I  fear,  as  people  went  to  see 
t-he  same  Damaged  Goods,  under  shelter  of 

[  '43  1 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


its  sponsors,  who  cared  for  nothing  what 
ever  except  being  able  to  see  a  risque  play 
without  being  looked  at  askance.  But  we  shall 
come  to  that  aspect  of  it  later. 

Now  "temperament,"  again,  has  often  been 
confused  with  charm;  and  conventional  folk — 
who  are,  by  definition,  dull  and  unoriginal,  all 
baked  in  the  same  archaic  mould — are  sup 
posed  to  lack  charm.  They  are  at  best  like 
inferior  prints  of  a  Hokusai  from  worn-out 
blocks.  The  "justification"  is  bad.  Their  origi 
nal  may  have  been  all  very  well ;  but  they  them 
selves  are  hopelessly  manque* t  and  besides, 
there  are  too  many  of  them.  How  can  they 
have  charm — that  virtue  of  the  individual, 
unmatchable,  unpredicable  creature? 

It  is  not  against  the  acutest  critics,  the  real 
"collectors"  and  connoisseurs  of  human  mas 
terpieces,  that  I  am  inveighing.  I  am  objecting 
to  the  stupid  criticisms  of  the  stupid;  to  the 
presence  of  "conventional"  as  a  legitimate 
curse  on  the  lips  of  people  who  do  not  know 
what  they  are  talking  about.  One  often  hears 
it— "I  find  him"  (or  "her")  "so  difficult  to 
talk  to:  he"  (or  "she")  "is  so  conventional." 
Good  heavens!  As  if  the  conventional  person 
were  not  always  at  least  easy  to  talk  to!  He 
may  be  dull,  but  he  knows  his  cues,  and  will 
play  the  game  as  long  as  manners  require.  It 
is  the  wild  man  on  a  rock,  with  a  code  that  you 
cannot  be  expected  to  know,  because  it  is  his 

[I44J 


TABU  AND    TEMPERAMENT 

own  peerless  secret,  who  is  hard  to  talk  to. 
The  people  who  say  that  conventional  folk 
lack  charm,  often  mean  by  "conventional"  not 
wearing  your  heart  on  your  sleeve.  Now  I  posi 
tively  like  the  sense,  when  I  dine  out,  and  stoop 
to  rescue  a  falling  handkerchief,  that  I  am  not 
going  to  rub  my  shoulder  against  a  heart. 
What  are  hearts  doing  on  sleeves?  Am  I  a 
daw,  that  I  should  enjoy  pecking  at  them? 
And  who  has  any  right  to  assume  that,  because 
they  are  not  worn  there,  they  are  non-existent? 
It  is  of  the  essence  of  human  nature  to  long 
for  the  unattainable.  If  you  do  not  believe  me, 
look  at  all  the  love-poetry  in  the  world.  As  Mr. 
Chesterton  says,  "the  coldness  of  Chloe"  has 
been  responsible  for  most  of  it.  Certainly,  if 
Chloe  had  worn  her  heart  on  her  sleeve,  the 
anthologies  would  have  suffered.  And  with 
woman  the  case  is  the  same.  Let  not  the  mod 
ern  hero  flatter  himself  that  he  will  ever  arouse 
the  same  kind  of  ardor  in  the  female  heart 
that  the  heroes  of  old  did:  those  seared  and 
saddened  and  magnificent  creatures  who  bore 
hearts  of  flame  within  their  granite  breasts — 
but  whose  breasts  were  granite,  all  the  same. 
No,  gentlemen,  women  may  marry  you,  but  it 
is  with  a  diminished  thrill.  We  want — men  and 
women  both — to  be  intrigued;  and  I  venture 
to  say  that  for  purposes  of  life,  not  of  mere 
irresponsible  conversation,  it  is  the  conven 
tional  person  who  intrigues  us,  since  it  is  only 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


the  conventional  person  who  creates  the  illu 
sion  of  inaccessibility.  He  may  be  accessible,  in 
reality;  and  the  unconventional,  temperamen 
tal  person  may  be  an  impregnable  fortress. 
That  is  the  dizzy  chance  of  life.  But  since  all 
relations  must  have  a  beginning,  the  initial 
impression  is  the  thing  that  counts.  Of  course 
one  wants  to  know  that  the  Queen  of  Spain  has 
legs;  but  then  we  can  be  pretty  sure  that  she 
has.  We  do  not  need  a  slit  skirt  to  reassure  us. 
One  wants  to  know  that  there  is  a  human  face 
behind  the  mask;  but  who  shall  say  that  the 
mask  does  not  heighten  such  beauty  as  there 
is?  The  conventional  manner  is  a  kind  of 
domino :  the  accepted  costume  that  all  civilized 
people  adopt  for  a  time  before  unmasking.  I 
do  not  suggest  that  we  should  disguise  our 
selves  to  the  end;  but  that  we  should  talk  a 
little  before  we  do  unmask. 

For  there  must  be  some  ground  on  which  to 
meet  the  person  we  do  not  know ;  and  why  may 
not  the  majority  decide  what  grounds  are  the 
most  convenient  for  all  concerned?  There  must 
be  some  simplification  of  life:  we  cannot  afford 
to  have  as  many  social  codes  as  we  have 
acquaintances.  Imagine  knowing  five  hundred 
people,  and  having  to  greet  each  with  a  differ 
ent  formula!  Language  would  not  run  to  it. 
And  would  it,  in  any  case,  constitute  charm? 
Charm,  as  we  all  know,  is  a  rare  and  treasur- 
able  thing ;  and  no  one  can  say  where  it  will  be 


TABU  AND   TEMPERAMENT 

found.  But,  as  far  as  we  can  analyze  it  at  all, 
its  elements  seem  very  likely  to  flourish  in  con 
ventional  air.  Of  course  there  may  be  a  fearful 
joy  in  watching  the  man  of  whom  you  say: 
"One  can  never  tell  what  he  is  going  to  do 
next.'1  But  you  do  not  want  him  about,  except 
on  very  special  occasions.  For  the  honest  truth 
is  that  the  unconventional  person  is  almost 
never  just  unconventional  enough.  He  is  pretty 
sure  to  take  you  by  surprise  at  some  moment 
when  you  do  not  feel  like  being  taken  by  sur 
prise.  Then  you  have  to  invent  the  proper  way 
to  meet  the  situation,  which  is  a  bore.  It  is  not 
strange  that  some  of  our  revoltes  preach  trial 
marriage:  for  the  only  safe  way  to  marry  them 
at  all  would  be  on  trial.  Until  you  had  definitely 
experienced  all  the  human  situations  with  them, 
you  would  have  no  means  of  knowing  how,  in 
any  given  situation,  they  would  behave.  They 
might  conform  about  evening-dress,  and  throw 
plates  between  courses;  they  might  be  charm 
ing  to  your  friends,  and  ask  the  waiter  to  sit 
down  and  finish  dinner  with  you.  Or  they  might 
in  all  things,  little  and  big,  be  irreproachable. 
The  point  is  that  you  would  never  know.  You 
could  never  take  your  ease  in  your  inn,  for 
nothing  discoverable  in  earth  or  heaven  would 
determine  or  indicate  their  code.  Conventional 
manners  are  a  kind  of  literacy  test  for  the  alien 
who  comes  among  us.  Not  a  fundamentally 
safe  one?  Perhaps  not.  But  some  test  there 

[147] 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


must  be;  and  this,  on  the  whole,  is  the  easiest 
to  pass  for  those  whom  we  are  likely  to  want 
for  intimates.  That  is  really  the  social  use  of 
conventions. 

And  as  for  charm:  your  most  charming 
people  are  those  who  constantly  find  new  and 
unexpected  ways  of  delighting  us.  Are  such 
often  to  be  found  among  people  who  are  con 
stantly  finding  new  and  unexpected  ways  of 
shocking  us?  I  wonder.  It  seems  to  me  doubt 
ful,  at  the  least.  For  shock — even  the  super 
ficial  social  shock,  the  sensation  that  does  not 
get  far  beneath  the  skin — is  not  delight.  If  you 
have  ever  really  been  shocked,  you  know  that 
it  is  a  disagreeable  business.  Of  course,  if  some 
wonderful  creature  discovers  the  golden  mean, 
the  perfect  note:  to  satisfy  in  all  conventional 
ways,  and  still  to  be  possessed  of  infinite  variety 
in  speech  and  mood — that  wonderful  creature  is 
to  be  prized  above  the  phoenix.  But  you  cannot 
give  rein  to  your  own  rich  temperament  in  the 
matter,  let  us  say,  of  auction  bridge.  The  rules 
you  invent  as  you  go  alone  may  be  more  shat- 
teringly  amusing  than  anything  Hoyle  ever 
thought  of;  but  you  cannot  call  it  auction,  and 
you  must  not  expect  other  people  to  know  how 
to  return  your  leads.  And  usually  it  only  means 
breaking  rules  without  substituting  anything 
better — revoking  for  a  whim.  Life  is  as  co-op 
erative  a  business  as  football;  and  we  all  know 
what  becomes  of  the  team  of  crack  players 


TABU  AND    TEMPERAMENT 

when  it  faces  a  crack  team.  Only  across  the 
footlights  are  we  apt  to  feel  the  charm  of  the 
Ibsen  heroine;  and  even  then  we  are  apt  to 
want  supper  and  some  irrelevant  talk  before 
we  go  to  a  dream-haunted  couch. 

Now  this  matter  of  charm  is  not  really  an 
arguable  one;  for  charm  will  win  where  it 
stands,  whether  it  be  conventional  or  unconven 
tional.  Every  one  knows  about  the  young  man 
who  falls  in  love  with  the  chorus-girl  because 
she  can  kick  his  hat  off,  and  his  sister's  friends 
can't  or  won't.  But  the  youth  who  marries  her, 
expecting  that  all  her  departures  from  conven 
tion  will  be  as  agile  or  as  delightful  to  him  as 
that,  is  still  the  classic  example  of  folly.  It  is 
not  senseless  to  bring  marriage  into  the  ques 
tion,  for  when  we  advisedly  call  a  man  or  a 
woman  charming,  we  mean  that  that  man  or 
that  woman  would  apparently  be  a  good  per 
son  with  whom  to  form  an  intimate  and  lasting 
relation — not  for  us,  ourselves,  perhaps,  but 
for  some  one  else  of  our  sort,  in  whom  he  or 
she  contrives,  by  the  alchemy  of  passion,  to 
inspire  the  "sacred  terror."  To  amuse  for  half 
an  hour  during  which  you  incur  no  further 
responsibilities,  to  delight,  in  a  relation  which 
has  no  conceivable  future,  does  not  constitute 
charm;  for  it  is  of  the  essence  of  charm  that  it 
pulls  the  people  who  feel  it — pulls,  without 
ceasing.  Charm  magnetizes  at  long  range.  I 
contend  only  that  conventional  people  are  as 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


apt  to  have  it  as  any  one  else,  for  they  have  the 
requisites,  as  far  as  requisites  can  be  named. 
As  for  the  charm  actually  resident  in  conven 
tionality  per  se:  how  should  any  one  who  does 
not  feel  it  be  converted  to  it  by  words  of  mine? 
For  it  is  a  beauty  of  form :  not  so  much  of  good 
form  as  opposed  to  bad  form,  as  of  form 
opposed  to  formlessness.  The  foe  of  conven 
tion  enters  into  the  social  plan,  if  at  all,  as  a 
wild,  Wagnerian  motif.  And  the  truly  uncon 
ventional  person  has  not  even  a  motif;  for  he 
disdains  repetition.  He  scorns  to  stand  for  any 
thing  whatever,  and  you  are  insulting  his  "tem 
perament"  if  you  suppose  that  it  is  capable  of 
only  one  reaction  on  any  given  thing.  The 
temperamental  critic  of  literature — like  Jules 
Lemaitre  in  his  salad  days,  before  the  Church 
had  reclaimed  him — prides  himself  on  never 
thinking  the  same  thing  twice  about  any  one 
masterpiece.  Your  temperamental  creature  will 
not  twice  hold  the  same  opinion  of  any  one 
person.  If  he  has  ever  been  notably  pleased 
with  a  fellow-guest  at  dinner,  it  is  safest  never 
to  repeat  the  combination.  For  the  honor  of 
his  temperament,  he  must  be  disgusted  the  next 
time.  It  is  his  great  gift  not  to  be  predicable, 
from  day  to  day,  from  hour  to  hour.  But  a 
pattern  is  always  predicable;  and  what  you 
learn  about  a  conventional  person  goes  into  the 
sum  of  knowledge :  you  do  not  have  to  unlearn 
it  over  night.  Psychology  becomes  a  lost  art, 

[150] 


TABU  AND    TEMPERAMENT 

a  discredited  science,  when  you  deal  with  the 
temperamental  person.  You  might  as  well  have 
recourse  to  astrology.  His  very  frankness  is 
misleading.  He  can  afford  to  give  himself 
away,  because  he  gives  away  nothing  but  the 
momentary  mood.  Never  attempt  to  hold  him 
to  anything  he  has  said:  for  his  whole  virtu 
osity  consists  in  never  saying  the  same  thing 
twice,  and  never  necessarily  meaning  it  at  all. 
He  does  very  well  for  the  idle  hour,  the  box 
at  the  play;  but  for  the  business  of  life — oh! 

And  to  some  of  us  there  is  charm  in  the  code 
itself — charm,  that  is,  in  any  code,  so  long  as 
it  has  behind  it  an  idea,  though  an  antique  one, 
and  is  adhered  to  with  faith.  The  right  word 
must  always  seem  "inevitable";  and  so  must, 
after  all,  the  right  act.  An  improvisation  may 
be — must  be,  if  it  is  to  succeed — brilliant;  but 
acts,  like  words,  are  best  if  they  are  in  the 
grand  style.  Whether  in  speech  or  in  manners, 
the  grand  style  is  never  a  mere  magnificent 
idiosyncrasy;  for  the  essence  of  the  grand 
style  is  to  carry  with  it  the  weight  of  the  world. 

And  conventionality  is  now  said  to  be  sub 
versive  of  the  moral  order!  At  least,  most 
avowedly  unconventional  people  are  now  treat 
ing  themselves  as  reformers.  Conventions  did 
not  fall,  in  spite  of  the  neo-pagans ;  so  the  neo- 
Puritans  must  come  in  to  make  them  totter. 
And  with  the  neo-Puritans,  it  must  be  admitted 
(Cromwell  did  not  live  in  vain)  most  of  the 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


charm  of  unconventionality  has  gone.  It  has 
become  a  brutal  business.  The  neo-pagans  real 
ized  that,  to  be  endured  at  all,  they  must  make 
us  smile.  If  they  told  a  risque  story,  it  must  be 
a  really  funny  one.  At  the  present  moment,  we 
may  not  go  in  for  risque  remarks  in  the  inter 
ests  of  humor,  but  we  may  make  them  in  the 
interests  of  morality.  We  may  say  anything  we 
like  at  a  dinner-party,  so  long  as  we  put  no  wit 
into  saying  it.  We  must  not  quote  eighteenth- 
century  mots,  but  we  may  discuss  prostitution 
with  some  one  we  have  never  seen  before.  Any 
thing  is  forgiven  us,  so  long  as  we  are  not 
amusing.  If  we  only  draw  long  faces,  we  may 
even  descend  to  anecdote.  And  when  people 
are  asked  to  break  with  conventions  in  the 
interests  of  morality,  they  may  feel  that  they 
have  to  do  it.  It  has  always  been  permitted  to 
make  the  individual  uncomfortable  for  the 
good  of  the  community.  So  we  cannot  snub  the 
philanthropists  as  we  would  once  have  snubbed 
the  underbred :  for  thereby  we  somehow  damn 
ourselves.  If  you  refuse  to  discuss  the  whit? 
slave  traffic,  you  are  guilty  of  civic  indifference; 
and  that  is  the  one  form  of  immorality  for 
which  now  there  is  no  sympathy  going.  I  may 
have  no  ideas  and  no  information  about  the 
white  slave  traffic,  but  I  ought  to  be  interested 
in  it — interested  to  the  point  of  hearing  the 
ideas,  and  gathering  the  information,  of  the 
person  whom  I  have  never  seen  before.  It  is 
the  "Shakespeare  and  the  musical  glasses"  of 


TABU  AND   TEMPERAMENT 

the  present  day.  Vain  to  take  refuge  in  plays 
or  books :  for  what  play  or  book  is  well  known 
at  all  unless  it  deals  with  the  social  evil? 

Now  it  has  already  been  pointed  out  that 
vice  commission  reports  have  done  as  much 
harm  as  good.  The  discussion  of  them  is  not 
limited  to  the  immune,  "highbrow"  caste.  I 
know  of  one  quite  unimperilled  stenographer 
who  was  frightened  by  them  into  the  psycho 
pathic  ward  at  Bellevue;  and  we  have  all  read 
instructive  comments  in  the  daily  papers  which 
reiterate  that  virtue  is  ten  dollars  a  week.  A 
much  lower  figure  than  Becky  Sharp's,  but  the 
principle  is  the  same.  Out  of  her  weekly  wage, 
we  may  be  sure  the  shopgirl  (it  is  always  the 
shopgirl!)  buys  the  paper — and  therewith  her 
Indulgence  for  future  faults,  much  cheaper 
than  Tetzel  ever  sold  one.  For  Purgatory  now 
is  replaced  by  Public  Opinion.  Even  my  own 
small  town  is  not  free  from  the  prophylactic 
"movie."  One  small  boy  nudges  another,  as 
they  pass  the  placarded  entrance,  exclaiming 
debonairly,  "Oh,  this  'ere  white  slave  traffic, 
y'know!"  And  the  child,  I  have  been  given  to 
understand,  is  the  father  of  the  man.  The  un 
conventional  reformers  quote  to  themselves,  I 
suppose : 

Vice  is  a  monster  of  such  frightful  mien,  etc. 
It  never  occurs  to  them  to  finish  the  sentence: 
We  first  endure,  then  pity,  then  embrace. 

[153] 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


The  fact  is  that  Anglo-Saxon  society  has  got 
beyond  the  enduring  stage,  and  is  largely  occu 
pied  in  pitying.  There  is  a  general  sense  that 
the  people  at  large,  in  all  moral  matters,  know 
better  than  the  specialists.  We  will  take  our 
creed  not  from  the  theologians,  but  from  Mr. 
Winston  Churchill;  and  we  will  take  our  path 
ology  not  from  medical  treatises,  but  from 
Brieux.  We  will  discuss  the  underworld  at  din 
ner  because,  between  the  fish  and  the  entree, 
the  thin  lady  with  the  pearls  may  say  something 
valuable  about  it.  If  we  are  made  uncomfort 
able  by  the  discussion,  it  only  shows  that  we 
are  selfish  pigs. 

Now  I  see  no  reason  why  decent-minded 
people  should  not  discuss  with  their  intimate 
friends  anything  they  please.  If  you  are  really 
intimate  with  any  one,  you  are  not  likely  to  dis 
cuss  things  unless  you  both  please.  But  I  do  see, 
still,  a  beautiful  result  of  the  old  order  that  the 
new  order  does  not  tend  to  produce.  The  con 
ventional  avoidance  as  a  general  subject  of 
conversation  of  sex  in  all  its  phases  was  a  safe 
guard  to  sensibilities.  You  cannot,  in  one  sense, 
discuss  sex  quite  impersonally,  for  every  one  is 
of  one  sex  or  the  other.  The  people  who  cry 
out  against  the  segregation  of  the  negro  in 
government  offices  have  hardly  realized  that 
non-segregation  is  objected  to,  not  because  of 
itself,  but  because  of  miscegenation.  There  is 
a  little  logic  left  in  the  world;  and  there 

[I54l 


TABU  AND   TEMPERAMENT 

are  some  people  who  perceive  that  sequence, 
whether  they  phrase  it  or  not.  Social  distinc 
tions  concern  themselves  ultimately  with  whom 
you  may  and  whom  you  may  not  marry.  You 
do  not  bring  people  together  in  society  who  are 
tabu  to  each  other.  Not  that  you  necessarily 
expect,  out  of  a  hundred  dinner-parties,  any 
one  marriage  to  result;  but  you  assume  social 
equality  in  the  people  seated  about  your  board. 
Is  not,  in  the  last  analysis,  the  only  sense  in 
such  a  phrase  as  "social  equality,'*  the  sense  of 
marriageability?  Even  conventions  are  not  so 
superficial  as  they  seem;  and  they  have  that 
perfectly  good  human  basis.  It  is  vitally  impor 
tant  to  the  welfare  and  the  continuance  of  the 
civilized  race  that  sex-sensibilities  should  be 
preserved,  Otherwise  you  will  not  get  the 
romantic  mating;  and  the  unromantic  mating, 
once  well  established  in  society,  will  give  rise 
to  a  perfectly  transmissible  (whether  by  hered 
ity  or  environment,  O  shade  of  Mendel!) 
brutality.  It  is  brutalizing  to  talk  promiscu 
ously  of  things  that  are  essentially  private  to 
the  individual;  just  as  it  is  brutalizing  (I  be 
lieve  no  one  questions  that)  for  a  family  and 
eight  boarders  to  sleep  in  one  room — even  a 
large  room.  All  violations  of  essential  privacy 
are  brutalizing.  We  do  not  take  our  tooth 
brushes  with  us  when  we  go  out  to  dinner,  and 
if  we  did,  and  did  not  mind  (very  soon  we 
should  not),  the  practice,  I  am  sure,  would 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


have  a  brutalizing  effect.  A  certain  amount  of 
plain  speaking  is,  perhaps,  a  good  thing;  but 
there  is  no  doubt  that  at  present  we  have  far 
too  much  of  it  to  suit  most  of  us,  and  I  cannot 
see  why  we  should  be  made  to  endure  it  just 
because  a  few  people  who  are  by  way  of  calling 
themselves  moralists  cannot  get  on  with  society 
on  its  own  terms. 

It  has  long  been  a  convention  among  people 
who  are  not  cynical  that  bodily  matters  are  not 
spoken  of  in  mixed  and  unfamiliar  gather 
ings.  Of  course,  our  great-grandmothers  were 
prudes.  The  reason  why  they  talked  so  much 
about  their  souls,  I  fancy,  is  that  there  was 
hardly  a  limb  or  a  feature  of  the  human  body 
that  they  thought  it  proper  to  mention.  They 
were  driven  back  on  religion  because  they  held 
that  the  soul  really  had  nothing  to  do  with  the 
body  at  all.  The  psychiatrists  have  done  their 
best  to  take  away  from  us  that  (on  the  whole) 
comforting  belief.  In  America,  at  least,  we  are 
finding  it  harder  and  harder  to  get  out  of  the 
laboratory.  It  is  the  serious  and  patriotic 
American  in  The  Madras  House  who  asks 
the  astonished  Huxtable,  "But  are  you  the 
mean  sensual  man?"  In  The  Madras  House 
the  question  is  screamingly  funny;  but  I  cannot 
imagine  any  man's  liking,  in  his  own  house,  to 
have  the  question  put  to  him  by  a  total  stranger. 
The  fact  is  that  we  have  dragged  our  Ibsen  and 
our  Strindberg  and  our  Sudermann  lovingly 


TABU  AND   TEMPERAMENT 

across  the  footlights,  and  are  hugging  them  to 
our  hearts  in  the  privacy  of  our  boxes.  We 
have  decided  that  manners  shall  consist  entirely 
of  morals.  It  is  just  possible  that,  in  the  days 
when  morals  consisted  largely  of  manners, 
fewer  people  were  contaminated.  You  cannot 
shock  a  person  practically  whom  you  are  totally 
unwilling  to  shock  verbally;  and  if  you  are  per 
fectly  willing  to  shock  an  individual  verbally, 
the  next  thing  you  will  be  doing  is  to  shock 
him  practically.  Above  all,  when  we  become 
incapable  of  the  shock  verbal,  there  will  be 
nothing  left  for  the  unconventional  people  but 
the  shock  practical.  And  that,  I  imagine,  is 
what  we  are  coming  to — all  in  the  interests  of 
morality,  be  it  understood.  At  no  time  in  his 
tory,  perhaps,  have  the  people  who  are  not  fit 
for  society  had  such  a  glorious  opportunity  to 
pretend  that  society  is  not  fit  for  them.  Knowl 
edge  of  the  slums  is  at  present  a  passport  to 
society  —  so  much  the  parlor  philanthropists 
have  achieved  —  and  all  they  have  to  do  is  to 
prove  that  they  know  their  subject.  It  is  an  odd 
qualification  to  have  pitched  on;  but  gentlemen 
and  ladies  are  always  credulous,  especially  if 
you  tell  them  that  they  are  not  doing  their  duty. 
Moreover,  when  you  make  it  a  moral  neces 
sity  for  the  young  to  dabble  in  all  the  subjects 
that  the  books  on  the  top  shelf  are  written 
about,  you  kill  two  very  large  birds  with  one 
stone:  you  satisfy  precocious  curiosities,  and 

[157] 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


you  make  them  believe  that  they  know  as  much 
about  life  as  people  who  really  know  some 
thing.  If  college  boys  are  solemnly  advised  to 
listen  to  lectures  on  prostitution,  they  will  lis 
ten;  and  who  is  to  blame  if  some  time,  in  a  less 
moral  moment,  they  profit  by  their  informa 
tion?  If  we  discuss  the  pathology  of  divorce 
with  the  first-comer,  what  is  to  prevent  divorce 
from  becoming,  in  the  end,  as  natural  as  daily 
bread?  And  if  nothing  is  to  be  tabu  in  talk, 
how  many  things  will  remain  tabu  in  practice? 
The  human  race  is,  in  the  end,  as  relentlessly 
logical  as  that.  Even  the  aborigines  that  we 
have  occasionally  mentioned  turn  scandals  over 
to  the  medicine-man,  and  keep  a  few  delicate 
silences  themselves.  Perhaps  we  are  "returning 
to  Nature,"  as  the  Rousseauists  wanted  us  to; 
with  characteristic  Anglo-Saxon  thoroughness, 
going  the  savages  one  better.  But  it  is  a  pity  to 
forget  how  to  blush;  for  though  in  the  ideal 
society  a  blush  would  never  be  forced  to  a 
cheek,  it  would  not  be  because  nothing  was  con 
sidered  (as  a  German  might  say)  blushworthy. 
Each  man's  private  conscience  ought  to  be  a 
nice  little  self-registering  thermometer:  he 
ought  to  carry  his  moral  code  incorruptibly  and 
explicitly  within  himself,  and  not  care  what  the 
world  thinks.  The  mass  of  human  beings,  how 
ever,  are  not  made  that  way;  and  many  people 
have  been  saved  from  crime  or  sin  by  the  simple 
dislike  of  doing  things  they  would  not  like  to 


TABU  AND   TEMPERAMENT 

confess  to  people  with  a  code.  I  do  not  contend 
that  that  is  a  high  form  of  morality;  but  it  has 
certainly  saved  society  a  good  many  practical 
unpleasantnesses.  And  we  are  clearly  courting 
the  danger  of  essentially  undiscussable  actions 
when  we  admit  every  action  to  discussion. 

I  saw  it  seriously  contended  in  some  journal 
or  other,  not  long  ago,  that,  whether  any  other 
women  were  enfranchised  or  not,  prostitutes 
ought  undoubtedly  to  have  the  vote,  because 
only  thus  could  the  social  evil  be  effectively 
dealt  with.  Incredible  enough ;  but  there  it  was. 
Not  many  people,  perhaps,  would  agree  with 
that  particular  reformer;  but  undoubtedly 
there  is  a  mania  at  present,  in  the  classes  that 
used  to  be  conventional,  for  getting  one's  infor 
mation  from  the  other  camp.  It  is  valuable  to 
know  the  prostitute's  opinion  —  facts  never 
come  amiss ;  but  why  assume  that  we  have  only 
to  know  it  to  hold  it?  Is  it  not  conceivable  that 
other  generations  than  our  own  have  known 
her  opinions,  and  that  lines  of  demarcation 
have  been  drawn  because  a  lot  of  people,  as 
intelligent  as  we,  did  not  agree  with  her? 
The  present  tendency,  however,  is  to  consider 
every  one's  opinion  important,  in  social  and 
ethical  matters,  except  that  of  respectable  folk. 
My  own  pessimistic  notion  is,  as  I  have  hinted, 
that  the  philanthropic  assault  on  the  conven 
tional  code  has  come  primarily  from  people 
who  were  too  ignorant,  or  too  lazy,  or  too 

[159] 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


undisciplined,  to  submit  to  the  code;  and  that 
the  success  of  the  assault  results  from  the  sheer 
defenceless  niceness — the  mingled  altruism  and 
humility — of  the  people  accused  of  conven 
tionality.  At  all  events,  the  fact  is  that  our 
reticences  have  somehow  become  cases  of  cow 
ardice,  and  our  rejections  forms  of  brutality. 
We  are  all  a  little  pathetic  in  our  credulity,  and 
we  are  very  like  Moses  Primrose  at  the  fair. 
Well:  let  us  buy  green  spectacles  if  we  must; 
but  let  us,  as  long  as  we  can,  refuse  to  look 
through  them! 

It  may  seem  a  far  cry  from  "temperament" 
to  social  service.  I  have  known  a  great  many 
people  who  went  in  for  social  service,  and  I  do 
not  think  it  is.  The  motives  of  the  hetero 
geneous  foes  of  convention  may  lie  as  far  apart 
as  the  Poles  (one  Pole  is  very  like  the  other, 
by  the  way,  as  far  as  we  can  make  out  from 
Peary  and  Amundsen)  but  the  object  is  the 
same:  to  destroy  the  complicated  fabric  which 
the  centuries  have  lovingly  built  up.  (Even  if 
you  call  it  "restoration,"  it  is  apt  to  amount  to 
the  same  thing,  as  any  good  architect  knows.) 
At  the  bar  of  Heaven,  sober  Roundheads  and 
drunken  rioters  will  probably  be  differently 
dealt  with;  but  here  on  earth,  both  have 
been  given  to  smashing  stained-glass  windows. 
Many  of  us  do  not  believe  in  capital  punish 
ment,  because  thus  society  takes  from  a  man 
what  society  cannot  give.  The  iconoclasts  do 
[160] 


TABU  AND   TEMPERAMENT 

the  same  thing;  for  civilization,  whether  it  be 
perfect  or  not,  is  a  fruit  of  time.  Conventions 
are  easy  to  come  by,  if  you  are  willing  to  take 
conventions  like  those  of  the  Central  Austra 
lians.  The  difference  between  a  perfected  and 
a  barbaric  convention  is  a  difference  of  refine 
ment,  in  the  old  alchemical  sense.  A  lot  of  the 
tabu  business  is  too  stupid  and  meaningless  for 
words.  Civilization  has  been  a  weeding-out 
process,  controlled  and  directed  by  increasing 
knowledge.  We  have  infinitely  more  conven 
tions  than  the  aborigines:  we  simply  have  not 
such  silly  ones.  The  foes  of  modern  convention 
are  not  suggesting  anything  wiser,  or  better,  or 
more  subtle:  they  are  only  attacking  all  con 
vention  blindly,  as  if  the  very  notion  of  tabu 
were  wrong.  The  very  notion  of  tabu  is  one  of 
the  rightest  notions  in  the  world.  Better  any 
old  tabu  than  none,  for  a  man  cannot  be  said 
to  be  "on  the  side  of  the  stars"  at  all,  unless  he 
makes  refusals.  What  the  foes  of  convention 
want  is  to  have  all  tabu  overthrown.  It  is  very 
dull  of  them,  for  even  if  a  cataclysm  came  and 
helped  them  out — even  if  we  were  all  turned, 
over  night,  into  potential  fossils  for  the  delight 
of  future  scientists  —  the  next  beginnings  of 
society  would  be  founded  on  tabu.  We  shudder 
at  the  Central  Australians;  we  should  hate  life 
on  their  terms.  But  I  would  rather  live  among 
the  Warramunga  than  among  the  twentieth- 
century  anarchists,  for  I  cannot  conceive  a 

[161] 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


more  odious  society  than  one  where  nothing  is 
considered  indecent  or  impious.  We  may  think 
that  the  mental  agility  of  the  Warramunga 
could  be  better  applied.  Well:  in  time,  it  will 
be.  But  they  are  lifted  above  the  brute  just  in 
so  far  as  they  develop  mental  agility  in  the 
framing  of  a  moral  law,  however  absurd  a  one. 
I  said  that  their  conventions  were  almost  too 
complicated  for  us  to  master.  That,  I  fancy,  is 
because  any  mind  they  have,  they  give  to  their 
conventions.  It  is  the  natural  consequence  of 
giving  your  mind  to  science  and  history  and 
philology  and  art,  that  you  simplify  where  you 
can;  also,  that  your  conventions  become  puri 
fied  by  knowledge.  Even  the  iconoclasts  of  the 
present  day  do  not  want  us  to  throw  away  such 
text-book  learning  as  we  have  achieved.  They 
do  ask  us,  though,  to  throw  away  the  racial 
inhibitions  that  we  have  been  so  long  acquiring. 
Is  it  possible  that  they  do  not  realize  what  a 
slow  and  difficult  business  it  is  to  get  any  par 
ticular  opinion  into  the  instincts  of  a  race?  Only 
the  "evolution"  they  are  so  fond  of  talking 
about  can  do  that.  Perhaps  we  ought  to  take 
comfort  from  the  reflection.  But  it  is  easier  to 
destroy  than  to  build  up;  and  they  are  quite 
capable  of  wasting  a  few  thousand  years  of 
our  time. 

No :  the  iconoclasts  want  to  bring  us,  if  pos 
sible,  lower  than  the  Warramunga.   Some  of 
them  might  be  shocked  at  the  allegation,  for 
[162] 


TABU  AND   TEMPERAMENT 

some  of  them,  no  doubt,  are  idealists — after  the 
fashion  of  Jean-Jacques,  be  it  understood. 
These  are  merely,  one  may  say  respectfully, 
mistaken:  for  they  do  not  reckon  with  human 
nature  any  more  than  do  the  socialists.  But  the 
majority,  I  incline  to  believe,  are  merely  the 
natural  foes  of  dignity,  of  spiritual  hierarchy, 
of  wisdom  perceived  and  followed.  They  object 
to  guarded  speech  and  action,  because  they 
themselves  find  self-control  a  nuisance.  So, 
often,  it  is;  but  if  the  moral  experience  of  man 
kind  has  taught  us  anything,  it  has  taught  us 
that,  without  self-control,  you  get  no  decent 
society  at  all.  When  the  mistress  of  Lowood 
School  told  Mr.  Brocklehurst  that  the  girls'  hair 
curled  naturally,  he  retorted:  "Yes,  but  we  are 
not  to  conform  to  nature ;  I  wish  these  girls  to 
become  children  of  grace."  We  do  not  sympa 
thize  with  Mr.  Brocklehurst's  choice  of  what 
was  to  be  objected  to  in  nature;  we  do  not,  in 
deed,  sympathize  with  him  in  any  way,  for  he 
was  a  hypocrite.  But  none  the  less,  it  is  better 
to  be,  in  the  right  sense,  a  child  of  grace  than  a 
child  of  nature.  Attila  did  not  think  so;  and 
Attila  sacked  Rome.  We  may  be  sacked — the 
planet  is  used  to  these  debacles — but  let  us  not, 
either  as  a  matter  of  mistaken  humility  or  by 
way  of  low  strategy,  pretend  that  the  Huns 
were  Crusaders! 


THE  BOUNDARIES  OF  TRUTH 

IT  is  pretty  much  taken  for  granted  by  decent 
folk  that  the  truth  should  be  told  in  all 
circumstances.  "It  is  never  permissible  to 
lie"  has  been,  ever  since  the  Christian  era  came 
in,  the  common  opinion,  if  not  the  common 
practice.  And  yet,  which  one  of  us  has  never 
lied,  I  will  not  say  against  his  conscience,  but 
for  the  very  sake  of  his  conscience?  Conven 
tional  religion  has  been  assumed  to  be  our  sole 
guide,  while  our  actual  conduct  is  usually  based 
on  the  different,  and  more  explicit,  code  of 
honor.  Honor  is  not  religion,  though  with  real 
religion  it  has  always  been  at  peace;  civilized 
manners  are  not  religion,  though,  again,  they 
have  always  been  at  peace  with  it.  In  the  mat 
ter  of  lying,  both  honor  and  civilized  manners 
have  a  great  deal  to  say;  and  the  fact  that  we 
realize  this  subconsciously  is  responsible  for  a 
great  many  minor  perplexities. 

Strictly  speaking,  in  Candide's  "best  of  pos 
sible  worlds"  lies  should  not  pass  human  lips. 
There  are  many  people  who  stick  to  the  literal 
interpretation  of  the  precept:  ladies,  for  ex 
ample,  who  retire  to  the  back  porch  before 
they  permit  their  maids  to  tell  the  unwelcome 
caller  that  they  are  "out."  There,  presumably, 

[164] 


THE  BOUNDARIES  OF   TRUTH 

they  gaze  at  the  blue  sky,  and  congratulate 
themselves  on  their  unimpeachable  veracity. 
Yet  even  scrupulous  people  allow  their  servants 
to  say  they  are  out  when  they  are  in,  because 
"out"  is  conventionally  understood  to  mean 
many  things.  On  the  other  hand,  Mr.  Chester 
ton  tells  us  that,  under  certain  conditions,  mere 
silence  is  the  most  damnable  lie  of  all.  The 
matter  is  not  so  simple  as  it  seems:  its  intrica 
cies  may  become  a  morass  for  the  unwary,  and 
an  enchanted  garden  for  the  casuist. 

Very  few  people,  I  fancy,  would  say,  after 
deliberation,  that  no  lie  was  ever  justified.  To 
be  sure,  I  once  heard  a  serious  young  man  pro 
test  that  Shakespeare  had  damned  Desdemona 
by  allowing  her,  at  her  last  gasp,  to  exculpate 
Othello.  I  have  also  known  people  who  ob 
jected  vehemently  to  the  late  Mark  Twain 
because  he  said  so  many  things  that  were  not 
so.  But  there  are  occasions  when  lies  are  taken 
for  granted,  even  by  the  law.  A  man  on  trial 
for  his  life  is  supposed  to  tell  the  truth,  but  not 
if  it  will  incriminate  him.  A  wife  is  not  dragged 
to  the  witness-stand  against  her  will  to  testify 
against  her  husband — no  one  would  legiti 
mately  expect  anything  but  perjury  from  her. 
I  do  not  see  much  difference  between  legally 
permitting  a  man  to  say  "Not  guilty"  when  he 
is  guilty,  and  legally  permitting  him  to  lie.  Is 
there  any  solitary  maiden  lady  who  would  not 
willingly  give  the  midnight  marauder  to  under- 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


stand  that  her  husband  was  just  coming  down 
the  stairs,  armed  to  the  teeth?  A  man  is  not 
supposed,  except  by  an  extinct  type  of  Puritan, 
to  "give  away"  the  lady  who  has  made  sacri 
fices  for  him;  and  even  the  extinct  type  of 
Puritan  would  hardly  expect  you  to  tell  your 
hostess  that  her  dinner-party  had  been  dull. 
From  this  heterogeneous  group  of  examples, 
one  may  infer  that  there  are  lies  and  lies;  and 
while  it  is  never  permissible  to  lie,  it  is  some 
times  quite  unpermissible  to  do  anything  else. 
Most  lies  of  the  decenter  sort  are  social. 
"The  admixture  of  a  lie  doth  ever  give  pleas 
ure,"  said  the  moralist  Bacon.  There  is  cer 
tainly  very  little  defence  for  the  lie  that  does 
not  give  pleasure.  It  is  to  save  other  people's 
feelings,  not  our  own,  that  we  tell  lies.  Let  me 
put  a  case  quite  bluntly.  How,  without  lying,  is 
a  man  to  thank  his  small  niece  properly  for  the 
necktie  which  she  has  selected  for  his  Christ 
mas  present?  No  one  wants  merely  to  be 
thanked  for  one's  trouble;  every  one  wants  to 
be  told  that  his  taste  has  been  perfect.  Now 
that  the  late  Phillips  Brooks's  handsome  eva 
sion  of  fact  has  become  historic,  who  ever 
dares  not  to  praise  a  baby  explicitly?  I  confess 
that  it  goes  against  the  grain  with  me  to  say 
that  I  have  enjoyed  something  which  I  have 
detested;  and  I  have  frequently  accepted  invi 
tations  (especially  over  the  telephone)  because 
my  tongue  would  not  twist  itself  round  the 
phrase  "another  engagement"  when  the  other 

[166] 


THE  BOUNDARIES  OF   TRUTH 

engagement  was  non-existent.  But  I  have  never 
had  the  slightest  compunction  about  saying 
that  I  was  sorry  I  had  another  engagement, 
when  I  did  have  another  engagement  and  was 
not  sorry. 

I  know  only  one  person  whom  I  could  count 
on  not  to  indulge  herself  in  these  conventional 
falsehoods,  and  she  has  never  been  able,  so  far 
as  I  know,  to  keep  a  friend.  The  habit  of  literal 
truth-telling,  frankly,  is  self-indulgence  of  the 
worst.  Nothing  could  be  more  delightful,  in  an 
evil  sense,  than  telling  certain  people  that  their 
Christmas  presents,  their  babies,  and  their  hos 
pitalities  are  all  horrors  which  defy  descrip 
tion;  especially  if  one  could  count  it  a  virtue  to 
one's  self  to  say  those  things  starkly.  But  one 
cannot  keep  that  weapon  only  for  one's  foes: 
the  only  excuse  for  saying  inexcusable  things  is 
that  one  always  says  them.  Roughly  speaking, 
one's  friends  are  the  people  of  whom  one 
thinks,  habitually,  pleasant  things.  But  even 
friends  can  be  annoying,  or  unbeautiful,  or  dull. 
And  it  is  of  the  essence  of  those  manners  which 
are  morals  not  to  tell  them  so  if  one  can  help 
it.  "Faithful  are  the  wounds  of  a  friend" — 
and  must  sometimes  be  dealt.  But  no  stabbing 
over  non-essentials !  And  above  all,  no  stabbing 
when  it  is  a  pleasure  to  stab.  Sometimes  these 
truth-tellers  congratulate  themselves  that  their 
praise  is  immensely  enhanced  by  its  rarity. 
There,  I  fancy,  they  are  mistaken:  for  in  the 
first  place,  praise  that  is  too  long  on  the  way 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


loses  its  savor;  and  in  the  second,  they  acquire, 
I  have  noticed,  a  censorious  habit  of  mind  that 
prevents  them  from  praising  at  all. 

No :  in  the  course  of  mere  conventional  liv 
ing,  a  certain  amount  of  lying  must  be  done. 
"How  do  you  do?"  "I  am  very  well,  thank 
you."  You  may  have  indigestion,  and  in  that 
case  you  have  lied.  Yet  is  it  your  business  to 
make  your  acquaintance  uncomfortable  by  tell 
ing  him  the  facts  in  the  case?  Certain  things 
are  true  of  any  man  personally  which  have 
nothing  to  do  with  his  social  existence :  person 
ally,  if  he  has  a  toothache,  he  has  it;  socially, 
he  has  not  a  toothache  unless  he  mentions  it. 
Then,  there  are  lies  which  are  not  verbal  at 
all  —  lies  of  implication.  The  early  Puritans 
who  objected  to  paint  and  powder,  objected  to 
them,  I  fancy,  on  perfectly  Catholic  grounds — 
it  was  immoral  to  make  yourself  attractive, 
and  paint  and  powder  were  literally  meretri 
cious.  On  the  same  principle,  to  this  day,  a  nun 
cuts  off  her  hair.  The  modern  feeling  against 
paint  and  powder — for  it  does  in  some  quar 
ters  survive — is  rather,  I  imagine,  on  the  score 
of  dishonesty.  You  are  not  supposed  to  disguise 
a  beautiful  complexion  if  you  really  have  it. 
But  if  you  have  not  a  good  complexion,  you  are 
deceiving  people  —  you  are  acting  a  lie  —  by 
making  yourself  look  as  if  you  had.  The  ground 
of  the  objection  has  shifted. 

Some  author — is  it  Mr.  Kipling? — says  of 

[168] 


THE  BOUNDARIES  OF   TRUTH 

one  of  his  heroines  that  she  was  as  honest  as  her 
own  front  teeth.  I  know  a  great  many  people 
who  are  as  honest  as  their  own  front  teeth  are 
false;  and  certainly  no  one  expects  them  to  go 
about  calling  attention  to  the  skill  of  their 
dentist.  Perhaps  some  sophist  will  say  that 
between  wearing  false  hair  and  declaring  one's 
false  hair  to  be  one's  own,  there  is  all  the  differ 
ence  in  the  world.  I  protest  that  it  is  tacit  false 
hood  to  wear  it  at  all — unless  one  does  it  after 
the  fashionless  fashion  of  an  ancient  lady  I 
knew  in  my  childhood  who,  quite  bald  at  the 
age  of  ninety-five,  hung  two  wads  of  chestnut 
hair  across  her  head,  like  saddle-bags,  on  a 
black  velvet  ribbon.  And  such  tacit  falsehoods 
are  all  in  the  spirit  of  the  conventional  polite 
ness  we  use  daily.  To  rouge  a  pale  face  may  be 
vanity;  but  to  thank  a  stupid  hostess  for  the 
pleasure  she  has  not  given,  is  loving  one's 
neighbor  as  one's  self.  I  am  inclined  to  think 
that  even  rouge  is  more  often  than  not  altru 
istic  in  intention.  One  does  not  wish,  for  the 
sake  of  society,  to  be  either  a  fright  or  a  brute. 
Certain  things  are  demanded  of  every  man 
who  meets  the  world  on  its  own  ground.  From 
the  moment  he  has  "accepted  with  pleasure," 
he  has  agreed  to  play  the  game;  and  it  is  as 
unfair  of  him  to  give  or  take  the  wrong  cues 
as  it  would  be  for  the  castle  to  insist  on  making 
the  knight's  move.  No :  we  need  not  go  out  of 
our  way  to  lie;  but  we  must  not,  even  to  be 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


clever,  tell  the  truth  when  an  innocent  lie  is 
innocently  demanded  of  us. 

It  occurs  to  me  that  my  examples  of  conven 
tional  falsehood  are  largely  feminine.  So,  I 
fancy,  they  should  be.  One  of  the  reasons, 
surely,  why  women  have  been  credited  with  less 
perfect  veracity  than  men  is  that  the  burden  of 
conventional  falsehood  falls  chiefly  on  them. 
A  man  expects  his  wife  to  do  this  kind  of  thing 
for  him.  It  is  she  who  accepts  or  refuses  their 
common  invitations,  directs  their  joint  social 
manoeuvres,  encounters  the  world  for  them 
both  on  the  purely  social  side.  He  is  not  ex 
pected  to  do  it  any  more  than  he  is  expected  to 
order  the  dinner.  There  is  more  straight-from- 
the-shoulder  talk,  I  imagine,  among  men  by 
themselves  than  among  women  by  themselves; 
but  that  is  partly  because  women  slip  out  of  the 
social  harness  less  frequently  and  less  easily. 
A  man  among  men  is  perhaps  (I  speak  under 
correction)  more  inveterately  his  personal 
self;  a  woman  among  women  more  inveter 
ately  her  social  self.  It  may  be  that  it  is  easier 
to  wear  the  harness  constantly  than  to  gall 
one's  shoulders  afresh  each  day  with  putting  it 
on.  I  am  inclined  to  think  that  women  are  as 
honest  with  their  intimate  friends  as  are  men; 
rbut — they  have  had  an  age-long  training  in  the 
penalties  of  making  one's  self  unpleasant.  So 
many  low  motives  are  imputed  to  women — and 
most  of  them,  at  the  present  day,  quite  unjustly 

[170] 


THE  BOUNDARIES  OF   TRUTH 

— that  they  are  driven  to  the  lesser  mendacities 
for  the  sake  of  getting  some  justice  done  them. 
When  Mr.  A.  asks  Mrs.  B.  if  she  does  not 
think  Mrs.  C.  beautiful,  she  is  almost  bound  to 
say  that  she  does,  though  she  does  not.  Other 
wise,  she  will  be  taken  for  a  jealous  fool.  One 
lie  is  better  than  two;  and  it  is  better  to  be 
thought  a  fool  when  you  are  not,  than  jealous 
and  a  fool  when  you  are  neither. 

Comparatively  few  people,  however,  will 
cavil  at  these  mendacities,  which  are  indeed 
\I/€v$fi  a\//€v8rj  —  as  mechanical  and  uncalcu- 
lated  as  a  gentleman's  "I  beg  your  pardon" 
when  a  lady  has  insisted  on  colliding  with  him 
in  the  street.  Truth  is  not  so  difficult  to  bound 
on  that  side;  for  most  people  recognize  the 
social  exigency,  and  if  you  are  praising  some 
one's  unskilful  cook  on  one  day,  the  chances 
are  that  she  will  be  congratulating  you  on  your 
amateur  gardening  the  next.  We  simply  have 
to  be  polite,  as  our  race  and  clime  understand 
politeness;  and  no  one  except  a  naif  is  really 
going  to  take  this  sort  of  thing  seriously.  It  is 
perhaps  regrettable  that  we  do  not  carry  cour 
tesy  even  further;  for  nothing  makes  people 
so  worthy  of  compliments  as  occasionally  re 
ceiving  them.  One  is  more  delightful  for  being 
told  one  is  delightful — just  as  one  is  more 
angry  for  being  told  one  is  angry.  Let  us  pass, 
however,  to  more  debatable  ground. 

There  is  an  old  refrain  which  runs,  "Ask  me 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


no  questions,  I'll  tell  you  no  lies."  I  am  inclined 
to  think  that  it  is  full  of  social  philosophy. 
Most  of  us,  probably,  have  put  up  our  hardest 
fights  for  veracity  on  occasions  when  questions 
have  been  asked  us  that  never  should  have 
been  asked.  "Refuse  to  answer,"  says  the  ghost 
of  that  extinct  Puritan  whom  we  have  evoked. 
An  absurd  counsel:  for,  as  we  all  know,  to 
most  of  these  questions  no  answer  is  the  most 
explicit  answer  of  all.  If  the  Devil  has  given 
you  wit  enough,  you  may  contrive  to  keep  the 
letter  of  the  commandment.  But  usually  that 
does  not  happen.  I  dare  say  many  moralists 
will  not  agree  with  me ;  but  I  hold  that  a  ques 
tion  put  by  some  one  who  has  no  right, 
from  any  point  of  view,  to  the  information 
demanded,  deserves  no  truth.  If  a  casual  gos 
sip  should  ask  me  whether  my  unmarried  great- 
aunt  lived  beyond  her  means,  I  should  feel 
justified  in  saying  that  she  did  not,  although  it 
might  be  the  private  family  scandal  that  she 
did.  There  are  inquiries  which  are  a  sort  of 
moral  burglary.  The  indiscreet  questioner — 
and  by  indiscreet  questions  I  mean  questions 
which  it  is  not  conceivably  a  man's  duty  either 
to  the  community  or  to  any  individual  to  answer 
— is  a  marauder,  and  there  is  every  excuse  for 
treating  him  as  such.  I  am  sure  that  every 
reader  remembers,  in  his  own  experience,  such 
questions,  and  counts  among  his  acquaintance  at 
least  one  such  questioner.  Let  him  say  whether, 


THE  BOUNDARIES  OF   TRUTH 

in  these  conditions,  he  has  felt  it  his  moral  duty 
to  hand  over  information,  any  more  than  he 
would  consider  it  his  moral  duty  to  hand  over 
his  plate  to  a  thief.  I  am  not  speaking  of  cases 
where  the  temptation  to  lie  is  merely  the  temp 
tation  to  save  one's  face :  it  is  not  permissible  to 
lie  merely  to  save  one's  face.  But  it  is  sometimes 
permissible  to  lie  to  save  another  person's  face 
— as  it  was  pardonable,  surely,  in  Desdemona 
to  declare  that  Othello  had  not  murdered  her. 
In  regard  to  the  lie  of  exaggeration,  a  word 
should  perhaps  parenthetically  be  said.  We  all 
know  the  child  who  has  seen  two  elephants  in 
the  garden  eating  the  roses.  We  also  know  the 
delightful  grown-up  who  "embroiders"  his  nar 
ratives.  He  will  never  tell  the  same  adventure 
twice  with  the  same  details.  The  fact  remains 
that  he  may  each  time  leave  you  with  precisely 
the  same  impression  of  the  adventure  in  its 
entirety.  It  is  quite  possible  that  you  trust  him 
exceedingly.  Of  course  it  is  also  possible  that 
his  ben  trovato  is  never  vero.  You  will  have 
to  determine  after  long  experience  of  him 
whether  he  is  fundamentally  false,  or  merely 
has  a  sense  of  style.  Personally,  I  know  exag- 
gerators  of  both  kinds:  people  whose  lies  are 
only  picturesque  adjectives,  and  people  whose 
picturesque  adjectives  are  only  lies.  There  is 
a  subtle  distinction  between  the  two.  At  the 
risk  of  being  at  loggerheads  with  the  rhetori 
cians,  one  must  say  that  truth  goes  deeper  than 

[173] 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


words,  and  that  there  is  not  much  in  a  truthful 
ness  which  is  only  phrase-deep. 

The  old  ladies  who  are  shivering  on  the  back 
porch  will  disapprove  of  me  for  saying  these 
things,  almost  as  much  as  I  disapprove  of  them 
for  being  on  the  back  porch.  To  speak  frankly, 
I  have  not  found  that  the  people  who  cling  to 
the  letter  are  always  the  people  who  cling  to 
the  spirit  of  the  law.  Some  of  the  men  and 
women  who  will  not  say  in  so  many  words  the 
thing  which  is  not,  will  deliberately  give  a  false 
impression.  They  are  not  the  servants  of  truth; 
they  are  the  parasites  of  truth.  The  ladies  I 
have  referred  to  may  be  technically  "out" ;  but 
they  are  really  "out"  only  to  the  undesired  visi 
tor — exactly  as  much  as  if  they  had  stopped  in 
their  own  sitting-rooms.  (Remember,  please, 
that  I  am  not  speaking  of  the  people  who  re 
ceive  the  unwelcome  caller  rather  than  permit 
a  maid  to  fib — they  are  in  a  very  different 
case.)  I  should  not  instinctively  go  to  these 
people  for  an  accurate  account  of  a  serious  sit 
uation.  Any  one  whose  conscience  is  satisfied 
with  that  kind  of  loyalty  to  fact  knows  very 
little  about  the  spirit  of  truth. 

I  do  not  jeer  at  literal  accuracy:  I  think  it 
an  excellent  safeguard  for  all  of  us.  The  person 
who  has  never  indulged  in  a  literal  falsehood 
is  the  less  likely  to  have  indulged  in  a  real 
one.  Generally  speaking,  words  follow  facts 
with  a  certain  closeness.  Not  always,  however. 

[174] 


THE  BOUNDARIES  OF   TRUTH 

I  may  truthfully  say  that  my  teeth  are  my  own, 
if  I  have  paid  for  them;  but  I  shall  none  the 
less  give  a  wrong  impression  to  the  engaging 
creature  who  has  asked  me  if  they  are  false. 
Substitute  serious  equivalents  for  that  kind  of 
veracious  reply,  and  you  will  see  what  I  mean. 
I  am  not  at  all  sure  that,  where  there  is  room 
for  doubt,  the  people  I  have  cited  will  not 
largely  take  the  benefit  of  the  doubt  to  them 
selves.  I  am  not  sure,  for  example,  that  the 
formula  "I  will  not  tell  any  one"  stands  to 
them  for  anything  but  a  fallible  human  proph 
ecy — something  apt  to  be  set  at  naught  by  the 
God  who  maketh  diviners  mad.  I  strongly  sus 
pect  that  mere  loyalty  will  never  make  them 
hold  their  tongues.  And  I  am  quite  sure  that 
they  will  often  be  silent  when  silence  is  the  most 
damnable  lie  of  all.  For,  in  their  technical 
sense,  silence  can  never  be  a  lie. 

In  this  short  distance,  we  have  come  near  to 
the  heart  of  the  matter.  Remember  that  the 
only  lie  forbidden  in  the  Decalogue  is  false 
witness  against  one's  neighbor.  I  may  feel  real 
respect  for  the  lady  on  the  porch — when  I 
think  that  it  may  be  hailing,  I  feel  positive 
awe — but  I  should  not  like  to  make  her  the 
recipient  of  an  intimate  confidence.  Such  a  per 
son  is  wholly  at  the  mercy  of  the  unscrupulous. 
To  be,  for  one's  self,  at  the  mercy  of  the  un 
scrupulous,  suggests,  I  admit,  the  saint;  to  be, 
for  one's  friends,  at  the  mercy  of  the  unscru- 

[175] 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


pulous,  suggests  the  cad.  It  is  not,  for  the 
normal  person,  a  pleasant  thing  to  lie:  it  is 
much  easier  to  record  the  truth  quite  auto 
matically.  There  is  in  each  of  us  who  have  been 
decently  brought  up  a  natural  antipathy  to  say 
ing  "the  thing  which  is  not."  The  basis  of  truth 
is  so  much  the  finest  basis  on  which  to  meet 
one's  fellow-men!  I  have  much  sympathy  with 
the  unpopular  people  who  cannot  bring  them 
selves,  even  in  a  ball-room,  to  "play  the  game." 
Of  all  ugly  things  to  be,  perhaps  a  liar  is  the 
ugliest.  And  yet,  and  yet —  We  may  not  go  into 
Victor  Hugo's  rapture  over  the  nun  in  Les 
Miserable*  who  gave  the  mendacious  answer 
to  Javert;  but  which  of  us  wishes  she  had  told 
the  inspector  that  Jean  Valjean  was  actually  in 
the  room?  Fortunately,  such  crucial  instances 
are  rare ;  and  usually  we  can  benefit  our  friends 
most  by  telling  the  truth  about  them — if  it 
were  not  so,  they  would  not  be  beloved.  It  is  a 
poor  cause  which  has  to  be  lied  for  regularly. 
But  in  the  rare  case  like  that  of  Soeur  Simplice, 
let  us  hope  that  we,  too,  should  lie,  and  be  as 
sure  as  she  of  making  our  peace  with  Heaven. 
For  one's  self  alone,  it  is  a  question  whether 
any  lie  could  bring  such  luxury  as  that  of  telling 
the  simple  truth.  To  lie  to  save  one's  self  is  the 
mark  of  the  beast;  to  lie  to  save  another  per 
son  may  make  one  distrust  the  cosmos,  but  at 
least  it  is  a  purer  fault.  For  it  seems  to  be 
agreed  on  by  all  codes  that  the  unselfish  motive 


THE  BOUNDARIES  OF   TRUTH 

is  a  mightily  purging  element.  On  the  whole,  I 
should  say  that  the  person  who  likes  to  lie 
should  never,  in  any  circumstances,  be  allowed 
to.  Leave  the  lying  to  the  people  who  hate  it. 
You  will  not  find  them  indulging  often. 

Perhaps  the  greatest  conflict  for  Puritan 
youth  has  always  come  when  it  faced  for  the 
first  time  the  unfamiliar  shape  of  Honor. 
Honor  and  John  Calvin  have  fought  on  many 
a  strange  battlefield  for  the  young  soul,  and 
the  young  soul  must  often  have  wondered 
which  was  friend  and  which  was  foe. 

Honour  and  wit,  foredamned  they  sit, 

sings  Kipling  in  an  atavistic  moment.  Which  of 
us  has  not  at  some  time  or  other  shudderingly 
understood  him?  And  yet  it  is  only  the  for 
tuitous  trappings  of  Honor  which  can  so  dis 
turb.  For  the  truest  thing  about  Honor  is  that, 
like  Charity,  it  "seeks  not  itself";  and  Honor 
in  the  mediaeval  sense  was  the  darling  child  of 
the  Church.  Honor  does  not  break  its  word;  it 
protects  the  weak  against  itself,  and  against 
others;  it  keeps  its  engagements.  It  is  more 
immediately  concerned  with  its  duty  to  human 
ity  than  with  its  duty  to  God;  which  is  doubt 
less  why  the  Puritan  mystic  saw  it  as  a  foe. 
The  code  of  honor  is  the  etiquette-book  of  the 
Christian;  and  the  people  who  have  attacked 
it  are  the  people  who  have  considered  that 
Christians  needed  no  etiquette.  By  our  ances- 

[177] 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


tors  who  were  bred  in  the  cold  and  windy  times 
of  the  Reformation  it  was  held  to  deal  chiefly 
with  duelling,  gaming,  and  illicit  affairs.  uThe 
debt  of  honor,"  "the  affair  of  honor" — what 
do  even  these  corrupted  phrases  mean  except 
that  the  gentleman  has  found  more  ways  to 
bind  himself  than  the  laws  of  the  land  afford? 
I  do  not  know  that  Honor  ever  compelled  a 
man  to  gamble  or  to  provoke  a  quarrel;  but 
if  he  has  gambled  or  if  he  has  quarrelled — if 
he  has  undertaken  to  play  the  lamentable  game 
— he  must  not  skulk  behind  a  policeman,  like  a 
cry-baby  or  a  sans-culottey  because  things  have 
not  gone  his  way.  If  he  has  broken,  he  must 
pay. 

Part  of  the  code  of  honor  begins  only  when 
the  Christian  precept  has  been  broken.  Is  it  so 
bad  a  thing,  in  a  fallible  world,  to  be  told  what 
to  do  after  you  have  once  done  something 
wrong?  The  Catechism,  as  a  practical  guide, 
is  wofully  incomplete  without  the  code  of  the 
gentleman  as  an  appendix.  If  you  had  sinned, 
the  Puritan  told  you  to  repent;  and  he  was 
quite  right.  But  there  is  work  left  for  the  sinner 
after  the  repenting  has  been  done.  Both  Honor 
and  the  Catechism  will  do  their  best  to  keep 
you  out  of  a  mess.  The  difference  comes 
later:  for  after  you  have  got  into  a  mess,  the 
Catechism  leaves  you  to  God,  while  Honor 
shows  you  how,  if  you  have  done  ill  to  fellow 
beings,  to  repair  that  ill  and  not  extend  it. 

Honor  is  a  matter  of  practical  politics — 


THE  BOUNDARIES  OF   TRUTH 

frightfully  unpractical  politics,  in  another  sense, 
they  often  are.  A  cynical  young  woman  once 
said  to  me  that  she  found  cads  more  interest 
ing  than  gentlemen,  because  you  could  always 
tell  what  a  gentleman  would  do  in  a  given 
situation,  whereas  you  could  never  tell,  in  any 
situation,  what  a  cad  would  do.  Cads  may  or 
may  not  be  the  proper  sport  of  cynical  young 
women;  but  to  the  average  busy  creature  the 
gentleman  is  wholly  delightful  in  that  he  is 
wholly  predicable.  The  Christian  is  not  pred- 
icable,  for  the  simple  reason  that  he  has  been 
given  a  counsel  of  perfection.  You  know  that 
any  given  Christian  will,  by  the  day  of  his 
majority,  have  done  some,  at  least,  of  the 
things  which  the  Catechism  has  expressly 
warned  him  not  to  do.  "The  way  that  can  be 
walked  upon  is  not  the  perfect  way,"  said  Lao- 
tse  long  ago.  The  Church  does  not  believe  that 
you  have  always  done  everything  that  your 
sponsors  in  baptism  so  cheerfully  said  you 
would  do.  The  confessional  is  itself  the  great 
est  confession  that  the  Church  has  ever  made. 
One  of  the  most  convenient  things  about  Honor 
is  that  its  explicit  code  is  limited;  and  you  can 
say  of  some  men  when  they  die  that  they  have 
never  for  a  moment  ceased  to  be  gentlemen. 
Honor  is  of  the  world,  worldly — and  some 
people  have  distorted  that  magnificent  fact  into 
an  accusation.  That  is  what  Mr.  Kipling  has 
done  in  "Tomlinson." 

All  this  about  Honor  is  not  so  much  a  digres- 

[179] 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


sion  as  an  approach.  For  if  few  people  will 
quarrel  with  the  lies  of  implication  and  of  con 
vention,  and  most  people  pray  to  be  delivered 
from  the  lie  of  self-defence,  the  lie  "of  obliga 
tion"  cannot  be  juggled  away;  and  it  is  the  lie 
of  obligation  which  Honor  commands.  Honor 
has  never  permitted,  still  less  commanded,  a  lie 
for  personal  gain  or  satisfaction  of  any  kind; 
but  there  are  cases  when  the  gentleman  must 
lie  if  he  is  to  be  a  gentleman.  The  gentleman 
does  not  betray  the  friend  who  has  trusted  him, 
even  though  he  may  bitterly  object  to  having 
that  friend's  secrets  on  his  hands.  From  that 
supreme  obligation  lies  sometimes  of  necessity 
result.  I  said  just  now  that  Honor  and  John 
Calvin  must  often  have  fought  for  the  young 
soul;  and  it  does  not  take  an  over-vivid  imag 
ination  to  conceive  cases.  Religion  (in  spite  of 
the  Decalogue)  has  tended  to  lump  all  lies 
together  as  the  offspring  of  the  Devil,  while 
the  code  of  the  gentleman  has  always  set  aside 
a  few  lies  as  consecrated  and  de  rigueur.  But 
the  gentleman,  I  venture  to  say,  has  always 
told  those  lies  in  the  spirit  in  which  a  man  lays 
down  his  life  for  his  friend.  For  no  gentleman 
lies,  on  any  occasion,  with  unmixed  pleasure. 
He  feels,  rather,  as  if  he  had  put  on  rags. 

It   is    easier — as    some    sociologists    do — to 

plot  the   curves   of   a   desire   than   to   fix   the 

boundaries  of  truth.  The  domain  of  truth  is 

not  world-wide:  that,  we  know.  They  must  be 

[180] 


THE  BOUNDARIES  OF   TRUTH 

home-keepers  indeed  —  perpetually  cradled  — • 
who  need  never  lie.  Literal  truth  is  impris 
oned  in  a  palace,  like  the  Pope  in  the  Vatican, 
affecting  to  be  the  ruler  of  the  world.  Even  the 
faithful  know  that  the  claim  is  vain.  The  lies  of 
obligation  and  convention  are  not,  in  the  deep 
est  sense,  unveracious;  for  they  are  not  pre 
eminently  intended  to  deceive.  We  expect  them 
of  other  civilized  beings  and  expect  other  civi 
lized  beings  to  expect  them  of  us.  Speaking 
such  falsehoods,  and  such  falsehoods  only,  we 
are  still  on  truth's  own  ground.  The  lie  told  for 
the  liar's  own  sake  marks  the  moment  when  a 
man  has  passed  from  beneath  her  standard, 
across  her  shadowy  sphere  of  influence,  and  is 
already  hot-foot  into  the  jungle. 


181  ] 


MISS  ALCOTTS  NEW  ENGLAND 

I  REMEMBER  being  very  much  impressed 
— and  not  a  little  shocked — when  a  friend 
of  mine  told  me  that  she  had  never,  in  her 
childhood,  been  able  to  get  any  real  pleasure 
out  of  Louisa  Alcott's  stories.  It  had  never 
occurred  to  me  that  being  brought  up  in  New 
York  instead  of  in  New  England,  or  even 
being  of  Southern  instead  of  Pilgrim  stock, 
could  make  all  that  difference.  Miss  Alcott 
seemed  the  safe  inheritance,  the  absolutely  in 
evitable  delight,  of  childhood.  Little  Women 
was  as  universal  as  Hamlet.  I  remembered 
perfectly  that  French  playmates  of  mine  in 
Paris  had  loved  Les  Quatre  Filles  du  Doc- 
teur  March  (though  the  French  version  was 
probably  somewhat  expurgated).  If  children 
of  a  Latin — moreover,  of  a  Royalist  and  Cath 
olic  —  tradition  could  find  no  flaw  in  Miss 
Alcott's  presentment  of  young  life,  I  could  not 
see  why  any  free-born  American  child  should 
fail  to  find  it  sympathetic. 

I  questioned  my  friend  more  closely.  Her 
answer  set  me  thinking;  and  it  is  probably  to 
her  that  I  owe  my  later  appreciation  of  Miss 
Alcott's  special  quality  and  special  documen 
tary  value.  For  what  my  friend  said  was  simply 


MISS  ALCOTTS  NEW  ENGLAND 

that  the  people  in  the  books  were  too  under 
bred  for  her  to  get  any  pleasure  out  of  reading 
about  them.  My  friend  was  not,  when  I  knew 
her,  a  snob;  and  I  took  it  that  she  had  made 
the  criticism  originally  at  a  much  earlier  age. 
All  children  are  as  snobbish  as  they  know  how 
to  be;  and  I  fancy  that  the  child's  perennial 
delight  in  fairy-tales  is  not  due  soLely  to  the 
epic  instinct.  One  is  interested  in  princes  and 
princesses,  when  one  is  eight,  simply  because 
they  are  princes  and  princesses.  Of  royalty,  one 
is  perfectly  sure.  I  have  never  known  a  child 
who  did  not  prefer  the  goose-girl  to  be  a  prin 
cess  in  disguise,  or  who  felt  any  real  sympathy 
with  the  princess  who  was  only  a  disguised 
goose-girl.  You  do  not  have  to  expound  the 
Divine  Right  to  any  one  under  twelve.  Peas 
ants  are  an  acquired  taste;  and  socialism  is  an 
illusion  of  age. 

Out  of  such  axioms  as  these,  I  made  my 
explanation  of  my  friend's  heterodoxy.  I  re 
membered  my  own  reaction,  when  very  young, 
on  a  story  that  centred  in  a  masked  ball  to 
which  all  the  inhabitants  of  the  kingdom  were 
bidden.  All  the  milkmaids  went  as  court  ladies, 
and  all  the  court  ladies  went  as  milkmaids — a 
mere  rounding  out  of  the  Petit  Trianon  epi 
sode.  The  moral  was  obvious;  and  I  recall 
being  frightfully  disturbed  by  my  own  absolute 
certainty  that,  if  I  had  been  going  to  a  masked 
ball,  I  should,  without  hesitation,  have  gone  as 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


grandly  as  I  possibly  could.  I  should  never 
have  gone  as  a  milkmaid,  so  long  as  the  cos- 
turner  had  a  court  train  left.  Did  it  perhaps 
mean  that  I  was,  on  the  whole,  nearer  to  the 
milkmaid  than  to  the  court  lady?  I  did  not 
like  the  story,  but  I  have  never,  to  this  day, 
forgotten  it.  Perhaps  my  friend  had  been  of 
the  same  age  when  she  discriminated  against 
Miss  Alcott.  But  then,  I  and  my  contempo 
raries  had  made  no  such  discrimination.  As  I 
say,  it  set  me  to  thinking.  Since  then,  I  have 
read  Miss  Alcott  over,  not  once,  but  many 
times,  and  I  think  I  understand. 

The  astounding  result  of  re-reading  Miss 
Alcott  at  a  mature  age  is  a  conviction  that  she 
probably  gives  a  better  impression  of  mid- 
,century  New  England  than  any  of  the  more 
laborious  reconstructions,  either  in  fiction  or  in 
essay.  The  youth  of  her  characters  does  not 
hinder  her  in  this;  for  childhood,  supremely, 
takes  life  ready-made.  Mr.  Howells's  range  is 
wider,  and  he  is  at  once  more  serious  and  more 
detached.  Technically,  he  and  Miss  Alcott  can 
be  compared  as  little  as  Madame  Bovary 
and  the  Bibliotheque  Rose.  Yet,  although 
their  testimonies  often  agree,  his  world  does 
not  "compose"  as  hers  does.  It  may  be  his  very 
realism — his  wealth  of  differentiating  detail, 
his  fidelity  to  the  passing  moment — that  makes 
his  early  descriptions  of  New  England  so  out 
of  date,  so  unrecognizable.  Miss  Alcott  is  con- 


MISS  ALCOTTS  NEW  ENGLAND 

tent  to  be  typical.  All  her  people  have  the  same 
background,  live  in  the  same  atmosphere,  pro 
fess  the  same  ideals.  Moreover,  they  were 
ideals  and  an  atmosphere  that  imposed  them 
selves  widely  during  their  period.  Mr.  Howells 
gives  us  modern  instances  in  plenty,  but  no 
where  does  he  give  us  clearly  the  quintessential 
New  England  village.  It  is  precisely  the  famil 
iar  experiences  of  life  in  that  quintessential 
village  that  Miss  Alcott  gives  us,  with  careless 
accuracy,  without  arriere-pensee.  And  it  must 
be  remembered  that,  in  spite  of  Dr.  Holmes's 
brave  and  appropriating  definitions  of  aristoc 
racy,  and  the  urbanity  which  the  descendants  of 
our  great  New  Englanders  would  fain  per 
suade  us  their  ancestors  possessed,  our  great 
New  Englanders  were  essentially  villagers,  and 
that  the  very  best  thing  to  be  said  of  them  is 
that  they  wrought  out  village  life  to  an  almost 
Platonic  perfection  of  type.  "Town"  will  not 
do  to  express  the  Boston,  the  Cambridge,  the 
Salem,  the  Concord,  of  an  earlier  time:  it 
smacks  too  much  of  London — and  freedom. 
The  Puritans  founded  villages ;  and,  spiritually 
speaking,  the  villages  that  they  founded  are 
villages  still.  The  village  that  Miss  Alcott  knew 
best  was  Concord;  and  if,  for  our  present  pur 
pose,  we  find  it  convenient  to  call  Concord 
typical  of  New  England,  we  shall  certainly  not 
be  doing  New  England  any  injustice. 

As  I  say,  what  strikes  one  on  first  re-reading 

[185] 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


her,  is  the  extraordinary  success  with  which 
she  has  given  us  our  typical  New  England. 
Some  of  her  books,  obviously,  are  less  success 
ful  in  this  way  than  others  —  Under  the 
Lilacs,  for  example,  or  Jack  and  Jill,  where 
(one  cannot  but  agree  with  her  severer  critics) 
there  is  an  inexcusable  amount  of  love-making. 
There  is  an  equally  inexcusable  amount  of 
love-making,  it  is  interesting  to  remember, 
in  much  of  the  earlier  Howells.  But  for  con 
temporary  record  of  manners  and  morals,  you 
will  go  far  before  you  match  her  masterpiece, 
Little  Women.  What  Meg,  Jo,  Beth,  Amy, 
and  Laurie  do  not  teach  us  about  life  in  New 
England  at  a  certain  time,  we  shall  never  learn 
from  any  collected  edition  of  the  letters  of 
Emerson,  Thoreau,  or  Hawthorne. 

The  next — and  equally  astounding — result 
of  re-reading  Miss  Alcott  was,  for  me,  the  un 
expected  and  not  wholly  pleasant  corrobora- 
tion  of  what  my  friend  had  said  about  her 
characters.  They  were,  in  some  ways,  under 
bred.  Bronson  Alcott  (or  shall  we  say  Mr. 
March?)  quotes  Plato  in  his  family  circle;  but 
his  family  uses  inveterately  bad  grammar. 
"Don't  talk  about  'labelling'  Pa,  as  if  he  was  a 
pickle-bottle!" — thus  Jo  chides  her  little  sister 
for  a  malapropism.  Bad  grammar  we  might 
expect  from  Jo,  as  a  wilful  freak;  but  should 
we  expect  the  exquisite  Amy  (any  little  girl 
will  tell  you  how  exquisite  Amy  is  supposed  to 
f  1861 


MISS  ALCOTTS  NEW  ENGLAND 

be)  to  write  to  her  father  from  Europe,  about 
buying  gloves  in  Paris,  "Don't  that  sound  sort 
of  elegant  and  rich?" 

The  bad  grammar,  in  all  the  books,  is  con 
stant.  And  yet,  I  know  of  no  other  young 
people's  stories,  anywhere,  wherein  the  back 
ground  is  so  unbrokenly  and  sincerely  "liter 
ary."  Cheap  literature  is  unsparingly  satirized; 
Plato  and  Goethe  are  quoted  quite  as  every 
day  matters;  and  "a  metaphysical  streak  had 
unconsciously  got  into"  Jo's  first  novel.  In 
The  Rose  in  Bloom,  Miss  Alcott  misquotes 
Swinburne,  to  be  sure,  but  she  does  it  in  the 
interest  of  morality;  and  elsewhere  Mac  quotes 
other  lines  from  the  same  poet  correctly.  Of 
course,  we  all  remember  that  Emerson's 
Essays  helped  on,  largely,  Mac's  wooing — 
if,  indeed,  they  did  not  do  the  whole  trick. 
And  has  there  ever  been  an  "abode  of  learn 
ing" — to  slip,  for  a  moment,  into  the  very 
style  of  Jo's  Boys — like  unto  Plumfield, 
crowned  by  "Parnassus"?  After  all,  too,  we 
must  remember  how  familiarly  even  those 
madcaps,  Ted  and  Josie,  bandied  about  the 
names  of  Greek  gods.  The  boys  and  girls  who 
scoff  at  the  simple  amusements  of  Miss  Alcott's 
young  heroes  and  heroines  are,  alack!  not  so 
much  at  home  with  classical  mythology  as  the 
young  people  they  despise.  Yet,  as  I  say,  the 
bad  grammar  is  everywhere  —  even  in  the 
mouths  of  the  educators. 

[187] 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


Breeding  is,  of  course,  not  merely  a  matter 
of  speech;  and  I  fancy  that  my  friend  referred 
even  more  specifically  to  their  manners — their 
morals  being  unimpeachable.  Miss  Alcott's 
people  are,  as  the  author  herself  says  of  them, 
unworldly.  They  are  even  magnificently  so; 
and  they  score  the  worldly  at  every  turn.  You 
remember  Mrs.  March's  strictures  on  the 
Moffats  ?  and  Polly's  justifiable  criticisms  of 
Fanny  Shaw's  friends?  and  Rose's  utter  lack 
of  snobbishness  about  Phoebe,  the  little  scullery- 
maid,  who  eventually  was  brought  up  with  her? 
Of  course,  Archie's  mother  objects,  at  first,  to 
his  marrying  Phoebe,  but  she  is  soon  recon 
ciled — and  apologetic. 

Granted  their  unworldliness,  their  high  scale 
of  moral  values,  where,  then,  is  the  trace  of 
vulgarity  that  is  needed  to  make  breeding 
bad?  They  pride  themselves  on  their  separa 
tion  from  all  vulgarity.  "My  mother  is  a  lady," 
Polly  reflects,  "even  if" — even  if  she  is  not 
rich,  like  the  Shaws.  The  March  girls  are 
always  consoling  themselves  for  their  vicissi 
tudes  by  the  fact  that  their  parents  are  gentle 
folk.  Well,  they  are  underbred  in  precisely  the 
way  in  which,  one  fancies,  the  contemporaries 
of  Emerson  in  Concord  may  well  have  been 
underbred.  It  is  the  "plain-living"  side  of  the 
"high  thinking."  They  despised  externals,  and, 
in  the  end,  externals  had  their  revenge.  Breed 
ing,  as  such,  is  simply  not  a  product  of  the 
[188] 


MISS  ALCOTTS  NEW  ENGLAND 

independent  village.  (Some  one  may  mention 
Cranford;  but  you  cannot  call  Cranford  inde 
pendent,  with  its  slavish  adherence  to  the  eti 
quette  of  the  Honourable  Mrs.  Jamieson,  its 
constant  awed  reference  to  Sir  Peter  Arley 
and  the  "county  families.")  The  villagers  have 
not — and  who  supposes  that  Bronson  Alcott 
and  Thoreau  had  it? — the  gift  of  civilized 
contacts.  A  contact,  be  it  remembered,  is  not 
quite  the  same  thing  as  a  relation.  Manners 
are  a  natural  growth  of  courts.  Recall  any 
mediaeval  dwelling  of  royalty;  then  imagine 
life  lived  in  those  cramped  chambers,  in  the 
perpetual  presence  of  superiors  and  inferiors 
alike — and  lived  informally! 

In  Miss  Alcott's  world,  all  that  is  changed. 
According  to  the  older  tradition,  a  totally  un- 
chaperoned  youth  would  mean  lack  of  breed 
ing.  Here,  on  the  contrary,  all  the  heroines  are 
unchaperoned,  while  the  match-making  mamma 
is  anathema.  We  did  not  cut  off  King  Charles's 
head  for  nothing.  The  reward  of  the  unchap 
eroned  daughter  is  to  make  a  good  match.  In 
that  rigid  school,  conventions  are  judged — and 
nobly  enough,  Heaven  knows !  —  from  the 
point  of  view  of  morals  alone  (of  absolute, 
not  of  historic  or  evolutionary  morals)  and 
many  conventions  are  thereby  damned.  The 
result  is  a  little  like  what  one  has  heard  of 
contemporary  Norway.  "Underbred"  is  very 
likely  too  strong  a  word;  yet  one  does  see  how 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


the  social  state  described  in  Little  Women 
might  easily  shock  any  one  brought  up  in  a  less 
provincial  tradition.  There  is  too  much  love- 
making,  for  example.  Though  sweethearting 
between  five-year-olds  is  frowned  on,  sweet- 
hearting  between  fifteen-year-olds  is  quite  the 
thing.  In  real  life,  it  would  not  always  be  safe 
to  marry,  very  young,  your  first  playmate.  Any 
one  who  has  lived  in  the  more  modern  New 
England  village  knows  perfectly  well  that 
people  still  marry,  very  young,  their  first  play 
mates,  and  that  disaster  often  results.  Nor  can 
Una  always  depend  on  the  protection  of  a  lion 
that  is  necessarily  invisible.  Granted  that  Jo's 
precocious  sense  was  right,  and  that  it  would 
have  been  a  mistake  for  her  to  marry  Laurie; 
which  of  us  believes  that,  in  real  life,  she  would 
not  have  made  the  mistake?  You  cannot  de 
pend  on  young  things  in  their  teens  to  foresee 
the  future  of  their  temperaments  accurately. 
One  cannot  but  feel  that  if  Mrs.  March  really 
saw  the  complete  unfitness  of  those  two  for 
each  other,  it  was  her  duty  to  put  a  few  con 
ventional  obstacles  in  their  path. 

Perhaps  all  this  was  part  of  what  my  friend 
meant  by  lack  of  breeding  in  the  traditional 
sense:  the  social  laissez-aller  in  extraordinary 
(and  perhaps  not  eternally  maintainable?) 
combination  with  moral  purity.  But  I  suspect 
that  she  referred,  as  well,  to  another  aspect 
of  Miss  Alcott's  environment :  to  the  unmistak- 

[190] 


MISS  ALCOTT'S  NEW  ENGLAND 

able  lack  of  the  greater  and  lesser  amenities 
of  life.  The  plain  living  is  quite  as  prominent 
as  the  high  thinking.  The  whole  tissue  of  the 
March  girls'  lives  is  a  very  commonplace  fab 
ric.  You  know  that  their  furniture  was  bad — 
and  that  they  did  not  know  it;  that  their 
aesthetic  sense  was  untrained  and  crude — and 
that  they  did  not  care;  that  the  simplicity  of 
their  meals,  their  household  service,  their 
dress,  their  every  day  manners  (in  spite  of  the 
myth  about  Amy)  was  simplicity  of  the  com 
mon,  not  of  the  intelligent,  kind.  You  really 
would  not  want  to  spend  a  week  in  the  house 
of  any  one  of  them.  Nor  had  their  simplicity 
in  any  wise  the  quality  of  austerity.  Remember 
the  pies  that  the  older  March  girls  carried  for 
muffs  (the  management  whereof  was  one  of 
the  ever  unsolved  riddles  of  my  childhood). 

No:  in  so  far  as  breeding  is  a  matter  of 
externals,  one  must  admit  that  there  is  some 
sense  in  calling  Miss  Alcott's  people  under 
bred.  Perhaps  we  do  not  choose  to  call  breed 
ing  a  matter  of  externals.  In  that,  we  should 
perfectly  agree  with  Miss  Alcott's  people 
themselves;  and  to  that  we  shall  presently 
come.  For  what  is  incontrovertible  is  that  Miss 
Alcott's  work  is  a  genuine  document. 

I  have  spoken  of  the  unimpeachable  moral 
ity  of  Miss  Alcott's  world.  Charlie  lost  Rose 
for  having  drunk  one  glass  of  champagne  too 
much.  That  is  the  worst  sin  committed  in  any 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


of  the  books,  so  far  as  I  remember.  Of  course, 
the  black  sheep,  Dan,  had  been  in  prison;  but 
he  had  killed  his  man  inevitably,  almost  help 
lessly,  in  self-defence;  and  besides,  the  treat 
ment  of  Dan  is  purely  snobbish,  from  start  to 
finish.  Even  Mrs.  Jo,  while  she  stands  by  him, 
is  acutely  conscious  of  the  social  difference  be 
tween  him  and  her  own  kin.  The  moment  he 
lifts  his  eyes  to  Bess — !  No:  the  books  are 
quite  snobbish  enough,  in  their  way.  Nat, 
foundling  and  fiddler,  is  permitted  to  marry 
Daisy  in  the  end  (though,  really,  anybody 
might  have  married  Daisy!).  But  Nat,  though 
a  parvenu,  is  a  milksop,  and  is  quite  able  to 
say  that  he  has  never  done  anything  really 
disgraceful.  The  fact  is  that  their  social  dis 
tinctions,  while  they  operate  socially,  are  yet 
all  moral  in  origin.  And  this  is  a  very  "special" 
note :  the  bequest,  it  may  well  be,  of  Calvin. 

We're  the  elect,  and  you'll  be  damned; 
Hell,  like  a  wallet,  shall  be  crammed 
With  God's  own  reprobates. 

The  transcendental  Mr.  March  would  never 
have  sung  it;  but  he  and  his  knew  something 
akin  to  those  resolute  discriminations. 

Another  point  is  perhaps  even  more  inter 
esting.  There  are  not,  I  believe,  any  other 
books  in  the  world  so  blatantly  full  of  moral 
ity — of  moral  issues,  and  moral  tests,  and 
morals  passionately  abided  by — and  at  the 
[  192  ] 


MISS  ALCOTTS  NEW  ENGLAND 

same  time  so  empty  of  religion.  The  Bible  is 
never  quoted;  almost  no  one  goes  to  church; 
and  they  pray  only  when  very  young  and  in 
extreme  cases.  The  only  religious  allusion,  so 
far  as  I  know,  in  Little  Women,  is  the 
patronizing  mention  of  the  Madonna  provided 
for  Amy  by  Aunt  March's  Catholic  maid.  And 
even  then,  you  can  see  how  broad-minded  Mrs. 
March  considers  herself,  to  permit  Amy  the 
quasi-oratory ;  and  Amy  does  not  attempt  to 
disguise  the  fact  that  she  admires  the  picture 
chiefly  for  its  artistic  quality.  Yet  it  is  only  fair 
to  remember  that,  in  Miss  Alcott's  day,  people 
were  reading,  without  so  much  as  one  grain  of 
salt,  the  confessions  of  "escaped"  nuns,  and  the 
novels  of  Mrs.  Julia  McNair  Wright — and 
that  Elsie  Dinsmore  developed  brain  fever 
when  her  father  threatened  to  send  her  to  a 
convent  school.  Perhaps  Mrs.  March  had  a 
right  to  flatter  herself.  Again,  as  I  say,  these 
are  documents. 

There  are  many  other  straws  to  show  which 
way  the  wind  blows.  Would  any  one  but  Miss 
Alcott,  for  example,  have  allowed  her  chief 
heroine  to  marry  a  Professor  Bhaer?  No  mod 
ern  child  ever  quite  recovers  from  the  shock 
of  it.  But  we  must  remember  that,  in  Miss 
Alcott's  time,  German  metaphysicians  were 
not  without  honor  in  Concord.  The  breath  of 
reform,  too,  is  hot  upon  the  pages.  "Temper 
ance" — remember  Charlie's  unlucky  glass  of 

[193] 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


champagne,  and  Laurie's  promise  to  Meg  on 
her  wedding-day;  the  festivals  of  the  virtuous 
are  a  perpetual  bath  of  lemonade.  "Woman 
Suffrage" — recall  the  discussions  alluded  to  in 
"The  Pickwick  Portfolio,"  and  the  fate  of  the 
few  scoffers  in  co-educational  Plumfield.  The 
children  are  all  passionate  little  Abolitionists; 
and  the  youths  are  patriotic  with  a  fervid, 
unfamiliar  patriotism,  which  touches,  at  its 
dim  source,  emotions  that  to  us  are  almost  more 
prehistoric  than  historic. 

In  the  minds  of  Miss  Alcott's  world,  there 
is  still  a  lively  distrust  of  the  British.  They  are 
wont  to  oppress  their  colonies,  and  they  cheat 
at  croquet.  Indeed,  Miss  Alcott's  characters 
look  a  little  askance  at  all  foreigners — except 
German  professors.  There  is  no  prophecy  of 
the  Celtic  Revival  in  their  condescending  char 
ity  to  poor  Irishwomen.  The  only  people,  not 
themselves,  whom  they  wholly  respect,  are  the 
negroes.  The  rich  men  are  nearly  all  East 
India  merchants,  and  their  money  goes  event 
ually  to  endow  educational  institutions.  The 
young  heroes  have  a  precocious  antipathy  to 
acquiring  wealth  for  its  own  sake.  Demi  would 
rather,  he  says,  sweep  door-mats  in  a  publish 
ing-house  than  go  into  business,  like  "Stuffy" 
and  his  kind.  "I  would  rather  be  a  door-keeper 
in  the  house  of  the  Lord" — it  would  hardly 
over-emphasize  Demi's  so  typical  feeling  for 
the  sanctity  of  the  printed  page;  for  the  utter 

[194] 


MISS  ALCOTTS  NEW  ENGLAND 

desirability  of  the  publisher's  own  office,  where, 
as  he  says,  great  men  go  in  and  out,  with 
respect.  And — to  complete  the  evidence — the 
books  do  not  lack  the  note  of  New  English 
austerity,  though  they  come  by  it  indirectly 
enough.  The  New  English  literary  tradition 
seems  to  be  fairly  clear:  either  passion  must 
be  public,  or,  if  it  is  private,  it  must  be 
thwarted.  There  is  a  good  deal  of  public  pas 
sion  —  for  philanthropy,  for  education,  and 
what-not — in  the  books,  after  all.  There  is  no 
private  passion  at  all:  though  the  books  brim 
with  sentiment,  Miss  Alcott  writes  as  one  who 
had  never  loved.  It  would  be  difficult  to  find, 
anywhere,  stories  so  full  of  love-making  and  so 
empty  of  emotion. 

Straws  show  which  way  the  wind  blows; 
and  these  straws  are  all  borne  in  the  same 
direction.  Is  not  this  the  New  England  on 
which,  if  not  in  which,  we  were  all  brought  up  ? 
Any  honest  New  Englander  —  a  New  Eng- 
lander  of  the  villages,  I  mean — will  admit  that 
the  New  English  are  singularly  ungifted  for 
social  life  and  manners.  We  suspected  that 
long  ago,  when  we  first  read  Miss  Alcott,  if 
we  happened  to  turn,  after  Little  Women, 
to  any  one  ,of  Mrs.  Ewing's  or  Mrs.  Moles- 
worth's  stories.  Imagine  Jo  dressed,  as  Mrs. 
Molesworth's  heroines  all  were,  by  Walter 
Crane!  The  real  "old-fashioned  girl"  was  not 
Polly  Milton,  but  Griselda,  in  The  Cuckoo 

[1951 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


Clock.  Polly  was  simply  of  no  fashion  at  all. 
There  was  some  (wistful?)  sense  of  this  in  us, 
even  then.  Yet  of  course  we  admitted  that,  in 
comparison,  Mrs.  Molesworth  lacked  plot — 
as  Heaven  knows  she  did!  Any  New  Eng- 
lander  of  the  villages  is  familiar,  too,  with  the 
passion  for  "education";  a  passion  that,  I  sus 
pect,  you  can  match  now  only  in  the  Middle 
West.  We  all  know  that  bigoted  scholarliness, 
in  combination,  precisely,  with  nasal  and  un- 
grammatical  speech,  which  there  is  no  special 
point  in  flattering  with  the  term  "idiomatic." 
One  or  two  of  Mr.  Churchill's  novels  have 
preserved  to  us  instances  of  it.  We  are  for 
tunate  if  we  have  come  off  quite  free  of  the 
superstition,  so  prevalent  through  the  March 
family,  that  a  book — "any  old"  book  —  is 
sacred.  We  scoff  heartily  at  the  parvenu  whose 
books  are  bound  without  first  being  printed; 
but  I  am  not  sure  that  any  pure-bred  villager 
would  not  rather  have  sham  books  than  no 
books  at  all.  We  cannot  help  it.  No  other  fur 
niture  seems  to  us  quite  so  good. 

We  have  all  been  brought  up,  too,  to  be  moral 
snobs.  New  England  mothers  must  often  be  put 
to  it  to  find  purely  moral  grounds  for  discrimi 
nating  against  some  of  the  playmates  their 
children  would  ignorantly  bring  home.  They 
must  often  yearn  to  say,  without  indirection, 
"I  do  not  wish  you  to  play  with  the  butcher's 
little  girl,  and  her  being  in  your  Sunday-school 


MISS  ALCOTTS  NEW  ENGLAND 

class  makes  no  difference  whatever."  But  the 
real  New  England  mother  never  does.  She 
must  manage  it  otherwise ;  since  the  only  legiti 
mate  basis  for  her  discriminations  would  be 
some  sort  of  proof  that  butchers'  little  girls 
were  apt  to  be  naughty.  The  respective  fates 
of  Nat  and  Dan  are,  I  dare  to  say,  as  accurate 
as  if  they  had  been  recorded  by  the  official 
investigators  of  the  Eugenics  Society.  The 
lack  of  religion,  some  one  may  object,  is  any 
thing  but  typically  New  English.  Perhaps,  a 
hundred  years  ago,  it  would  not  have  been. 
And  we  have  not,  to  be  sure,  been  transcen 
dental  with  impunity:  we  have  the  Calvinistic 
Unitarian.  But  the  average  New  England  con 
science  has  always  had  a  more  natural  turn  for 
ethics  than  for  pure  piety.  Children  in  Miss 
»  Alcott's  books  were  brought  up  like  ourselves, 
to  obey  their  parents.  It  was  Elsie  Dinsmore, 
on  her  Southern  plantation,  who  (like  a  Pres 
byterian  St.  Rose  of  Lima)  defied  her  father 
for  religion's  sake.  Of  course  we  all  had  to 
read  about  Elsie  surreptitiously.  We  knew  that 
without  asking.  There  was  a  good  deal  of 
plain  thinking,  as  well  as  of  high  thinking,  in 
our  and  Miss  Alcott's  world.  As  for  our  un- 
worldliness:  we  have  come  a  long  way  since 
Miss  Alcott;  yet  I  verily  believe  that,  even 
now,  almost  any  bounder  can  take  us  in  if  he 
poses  as  a  philosopher.  So  many  have  done  it! 
I  have  not  done  more  than  indicate  Miss 

[197] 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


Alcott's  exceeding  fidelity.  Begin  recalling  her 
for  yourself,  and  you  will  agree  that  she  gives 
us  social  life  as  New  Englanders,  for  decades, 
have,  on  the  whole,  known  it.  The  relations  of 
parent  and  child,  brother  and  sister,  commu 
nity  and  individual,  of  playmates,  of  lovers,  of 
citizens,  are  all  such  as  we  know  them.  They 
are  familiar  to  us,  if  not  positively  in  our  own 
experience.  Life  has  grown  more  complicated 
everywhere.  Yet  I  doubt  if,  even  now,  any 
New  English  child  would  instinctively  call  Miss 
Alcott's  people  underbred.  We  still  understand 
their  code,  if  we  do  not  practise  it.  New  Eng 
land  is  still  something  more  than  a  convenient 
term  for  map-makers.  These  be  our  own 
villages. 


THE  SENSUAL  EAR 

I  HAVE  a  friend  who  always  calls — when 
he  remembers  to,  for  alas !  he  sometimes 
forgets — the  Methodist  Church  building  in 
our  village,  a  "conventicle."  I  wish  he  did  not 
sometimes  forget,  for  nothing  makes  me  so  at 
peace  with  my  hereditary  nonconformity  as  to 
hear  an  Anglican  imply,  by  such  verbal  affec 
tations,  what  he  thinks  of  the  dissidence  of 
dissent.  Methodism  is  as  foreign  to  me  as 
Anglicanism;  yet,  I  doubt  not,  the  Epworth 
League  sings,  in  its  handsome  "conventicle," 
just  the  hymns  that  of  old  were  sung  by  the 
Y.  P.  S.  C.  E.  It  is  many  a  year  since  I  attended 
a  Y.  P.  S.  C.  E.  meeting;  and  I  have  an  idea — 
it  is  almost  a  fear — that  Gospel  Hymns,  No.  5, 
is  by  this  time  Gospel  Hymns,  No.  10,  and  that 
some  of  the  most  haunting  melodies  are  gone 
therefrom.  Perhaps  the  "Endeavorers"  are 
now  chanting  Hymns  Ancient  and  Modern. 
But  I  hope  not.  Oh,  I  cannot  think  it ! 

When  life  grows  very  dreary;  when  the 
Hindenburg  line  seems  to  turn  from  shadow  to 
substance;  when  the  Council  of  Workmen's 
and  Soldiers'  Deputies  has  indulged  in  a  new 
"democratic"  vagary;  when  flour  has  gone  up 
two  dollars  more  a  barrel  and  the  priceless 
potato  is  but  a  soggy  pearl,  deserving  to  be 
cast  before  swine;  when  another  member  of 

[  199] 


MODES  AND   MORALS 


the  family  has  broken  a  leg  or  had  appendi 
citis — then  my  husband  (he,  too,  of  yore  an 
"Endeavorer")  and  I  are  wont  to  burst,  simul 
taneously,  mechanically,  unthinking  and  uncon- 
spiring,  into  song.  And  the  songs  we  hear  each 
other  humming  in  separate  recesses  of  the 
house  are  Gospel  Hymns.  Humming,  we 
converge  upon  the  drawing-room  from  our  dif 
ferent  retreats;  and  sometimes  we  look  each 
other  in  the  eye  and  say  hardily,  "Let's."  Then 
we  sit  down  and  incite  each  other  to  a  desper 
ate  vocalism.  We  see  how  many  we  can  remem 
ber,  out  of  our  evangelistic  youth,  and  we  sing 
them  all.  We  remember  a  good  many,  if  truth 
be  told;  and  once  I  found  a  rapt  huddle  of  col 
ored  servants  on  the  stair-landing  getting  a 
free  "revival."  Neither  of  us  has  a  voice  worth 
mentioning,  so  I  think  that  we  must,  without 
realizing  it,  have  reproduced  the  fervor  along 
with  the  words. 

They  were  cannily  arranged,  those  Moody 
and  Sankey  hymns:  if  you  sing  them  at  all,  you 
cannot  help  pounding  down  on  the  essential 
words.  They  wallow  in  beat  and  accent.  "A 
Shelter  in  the  Time  of  Storm."  We  usually 
begin  with  that.  It  is  ineluctable.  But  oh,  how 
I  wish  that  either  of  us  could  remember  more 
than  one  "verse"  of 

Well,  wife,  I've  found  the  model  church, 

And  worshipped  there  to-day; 
It  made  me  think  of  good  old  times 
Before  my  hair  was  gray. 

[200] 


THE   SENSUAL  EAR 


I  have  never  heard  it  sung — I  never  "be 
longed"  to  the  Y.  P.  S.  C.  E.— but  my  husband 
says  that  he  has.  My  husband  also  says  that  he 
has  heard  "the  trundle-bed  one.'1  I  do  not 
believe  it,  though  he  is  a  truthful  man.  I  can 
not  believe  it;  the  less,  that  he  remembers 
none  of  the  words,  and  that  it  is  only  I,  who 
recall,  visually,  in  the  lower  corner  of  a  page, — 

Poking  (perhaps  it  was  another  verb)  'mid  the  dust  and 

rafters 
There  I  found  my  trundle-bed. 

A  slight  altercation  always  develops  here. 
Why  should  he  be  more  royalist  than  the  king? 
It  is  not  conceivable  that  it  was  ever  sung;  and 
even  he  cannot  remember  the  tune;  so  we  join 
forces  in  "To  the  Work,  to  the  Work,"  or 
"There  Shall  Be  Showers  of  Blessing." 

(Mercy-drops  round  us  are  /#//-ing, 
But  for  the  showers  we  plead.) 

He  has  an  uncanny  and  inexplicable  preju 
dice  against  "God  Be  with  You  Till  We  Meet 
Again" — perhaps  because  they  always  sang  it 
for  the  last  one.  But  I  can  usually  get  him  to 
"oblige"  with  a  solo— "Throw  Out  the  Life- 
Line" — which  I  am  sure  was  not  in  "No.  5," 
because  we  never,  never  sang  it;  though  I  do 
remember  hearing  a  returning  delegate  to  a 
Y.  P.  S.  C.  E.  convention  say  that  it  was  the  one 
"the  people  of  Montreal  seemed  to  like  best.'* 
Somewhere  in  the  nineties,  Endeavorers  in 
[201  ] 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


thousands  sang  it  all  up  and  down  Sherbrooke 
Street,  apparently.  Well:  I  am  like  the  people 
of  Montreal.  It  always  "gets"  me,  in  the  dis 
senting  marrow  of  my  dissenting  soul;  and 
when  my  husband  has  "obliged"  me  with  it,  I 
am  ready  to  forget  the  Council  of  Workmen's 
and  Soldiers'  Deputies.  What  can  the  devil  do 
in  the  face  of  "Throw  Out  the  Life-Line,"  and 
its  "linked  sweetness  long  drawn  out"? 

By  all  of  which  it  is  made  evident  that,  in 
the  matter  of  hymns,  mine  is  the  "sensual  ear." 
(Not  so  my  husband's:  he  sings  them  in  the 
critical  spirit,  as  he  might  illustrate  a  violation 
of  rhetoric.  He  loathes  "Throw  Out  the  Life- 
Line,"  even  while  the  chorus  makes  his  voice 
appeal  and  yearn  in  spite  of  him.  As  I  said,  he 
does  it  only  to  oblige.)  The  church  of  my 
choosing,  if  not  of  my  profession,  is  the  same 
as  that  of  my  friend  who  talks  of  "con 
venticles."  There  I  sing  Hymns  Ancient  and 
Modern  (or  that  American  corruption  thereof, 
the  Hymnal)  with  the  most  conforming. 
And  certainly,  except  for  a  few  time-honored 
chants  which  they  share  with  all  Dissenters, 
their  hymns  are  to  me  "ditties  of  no  tone." 
My  husband  disagrees  with  me;  but  he  is 
not,  equally  with  me,  the  predestined  prey  of 
the  brass  band.  He  is  better  educated  than  I; 
has  listened  oftener  at  twilight  to  the  en 
chanted  choirs  of  New  College  and  Magdalen. 
He  likes  the  non-committal  melodies  of  the 
[202] 


THE   SENSUAL  EAR 


Hymnal  far,  far  better  than  the  sentimental 
parti  pris  of  Gospel  Hymns. 

I  know  as  well  as  he  does  that  the  senti 
mental  quality  is  of  a  sort  that  ought  not  to  be 
there  at  all.  I  know  that  the  music  of  "Throw 
Out  the  Life-Line"  belongs  morally  with  the 
music  of  "Old  Black  Joe,"  and  "Oh,  Promise 
Me,"  and  "There'll  Be  a  Hot  Time  in  the  Old 
Town  To-night."  I  know  that  the  appeal  of 
that  tune  is  sensuous  and  emotional  and  per 
sonal,  and,  for  a  hymn,  all,  all  wrong.  I  realize 
that,  for* church,  Gregorian  is  the  only  wear; 
and  that  the  less  you  diverge  therefrom,  the 
more  decent  you  are.  I,  too,  prefer  Bach  and 
Palestrina,  and,  for  congregational  singing,  the 
oldest  Latin  hymns  you  can  get.  I  can  even  see 
that  the  aridity  and  sameness  of  the  Anglican 
"hymn-tunes"  are  more  dignified,  and  more  to 
the  purpose,  than  the  plangent  and  catchy  re 
frains  by  which  Sankey  lured  "wandering  boys" 
back  to  be  safe-folded  with  "the  ninety  and 
nine."  And  yet,  when  my  husband  (by  request) 
croons  "Throw  Out  the  Life-Line,"  I  cannot 
resist.  I  am  evangelized. 

True,  I  perceived  this  perniciousness  early. 
Perhaps  the  white  light  dawned  on  me  when, 
in  Y.  P.  S.  C.  E.  days,  an  older  friend  (who 
was  in  love)  confided  to  me  that  the  words  of 
a  certain  Gospel  Hymn  seemed  to  her  not 
altogether  reverent:  they  could  so  easily  be 
applied  to  a  human  love-affair.  She  was  quite 

[203] 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


right,  I  think.  Some  of  us  have  felt  the  same 
about  Crashaw  and  Giles  Fletcher.  But  though 
the  words  were,  in  all  conscience,  carnal 
enough,  I  believe  it  was  the  tune  that  did 
the  trick  and  set  her  dreaming  of  her  young 
hero. 

For  I  am  his,  and  he  is  mine, 
Forever  and  forever. 

Oh,  the  yearning  of  that  refrain:  slow  and 
honeyed  and  melancholy  as  "My  Old  Kentucky 
Home"  or  "Way  Down  Upon  the  Suwanee 
River"!  Musically,  doubtless,  not  so  good;  but 
musically  of  the  same  school,  and  suggestive — 
it,  too — of  plantations  and  moonlight  and  ban 
jos  and  rich,  heart-rending  negro  voices.  My 
friend  was  right:  they  are  not  in  the  best  tra 
dition  of  reverence,  those  Moody  and  Sankey 
hymns.  And  yet — here's  the  rub — why  do  we 
remember  them,  when  all  but  the  most  univer 
sal  of  the  hymns  we  sang  in  church  and  sang 
much  o'ftener  than  these,  have  gone  beyond 
recapturing?  My  husband  resents  remembering 
them;  he  would  far  rather  remember  more 
worthy  things.  But  I  do  not :  I  would  not,  for 
anything,  lose  them  out  of  the  rag-bag  which 
is  my  mind.  I  am  not  sure  I  would  not  rather 
lose  certain  stanzas  from  the  Greek  Anthology, 
which  come  to  my  lips  in  much  the  same  unvoli- 
tional  fashion.  From  those  refrains  I  recon 
struct  a  whole  moral  and  social  world,  even  as 

[204] 


THE  SENSUAL  EAR 


Cuvier  reconstructed  his  mastodon.  You  re 
member  what  the  "Evening  Hymn"  did  for 
Mottram  and  Lowndes  in  "The  End  of  the 
Passage"?  Just  that  "I  Know  that  My  Re 
deemer  Lives"  does  for  me.  And — this  is  the 
point_«Rock  of  Ages"  and  "Holy,  Holy, 
Holy,"  do  not  do  it;  though  I  knew  these  even 
earlier,  and  am  still,  on  occasion,  singing  them. 
So  it  is  not  all  a  question  of  association  and 
the  power  of  youthful  memories.  It  is  the  very 
quality  of  the  music — the  words  were  negli 
gible,  when  they  were  not  atrocious — that 
touched  in  me,  and  can  still  touch,  something 
popular,  emotional,  vulgar;  something  very 
low-brow  and  democratic,  not  to  say  mobbish. 
"The  sensual  ear." 

Even  in  youth,  I  had  the  sense  to  differen 
tiate.  "Jerusalem  the  Golden,"  discovered  in 
another  hymn-book  than  our  own,  was  for 
many  years  my  favorite  hymn — even  during 
those  years  when  I  was  singing  "Beulah  Land" 
and  "  Wonderful  Words  of  Life."  I  knew  it 
was  better;  I  knew  I  liked  it  better;  I  knew 
that  it  had  more  to  do  with  religion  than  all 
the  "Beulah  Lands"  ever  written.  True,  the 
words  helped;  and  the  words  of  the  Gospel 
Hymns  were  a  hindrance,  even  then.  But  my 
soul  recognized  the  validity,  the  reality  of  the 
music.  "Jerusalem  the  Golden"  remained  my 
favorite  until  "The  Son  of  God  Goes  Forth  to 
War"  succeeded  it  in  my  affections;  always  to 
[205] 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


be,  until  I  die,  my  very  favorite.  And  even 
while  we  sang — 

And  view  the  shining  glory  shore, 
My  heaven,  my  home,  for  evermore. 

I  had  memories  of  something  still  better  than 
"Jerusalem  the  Golden"  :  memories  of  an  inter 
val  in  a  French  convent  where  we  chanted  the 
Magnificat  to  its  proper  plain-song.  Though, 
even  there — but  I  shall  come  to  that  later. 

Not  long  ago,  we  had  a  friend  staying  with 
us  who  was  bred  a  Romanist.  How  Moody  and 
Sankey  got  mentioned,  I  do  not  know — but 
they  did;  and  our  friend  insisted  that  Moody 
and  Sankey  could  not  conceivably  be  so  bad  as 
the  modern  Catholic  hymns.  We  exclaimed; 
she  reaffirmed.  There  was  nothing  for  it  but  to 
put  the  burning  question  to  the  proof.  Quietly, 
by  the  fire,  we  staged  a  little  contest.  We  sang 
our  Gospel  Hymns;  and  she — well,  she  sang 
dreadful  things.  There  was  in  particular  a 
hymn  to  St.  Joseph,  beloved  of  sodalities.  .  .  . 
No,  I  think  her  "exhibit"  was  really  worse 
than  ours.  It  had  the  rag-time  flatness  without 
the  rag-time  catchiness,  or  the  crooning  negro 
quality.  Bred  up  in  part  on  such  modern  by 
products  of  the  Holy  Catholic  Church,  no 
wonder  that  she  succumbed  utterly  to  my  hus 
band's  rendition  of  "Throw  Out  the  Life- 
Line."  "I  think  it's  lovely,"  she  said;  siding 
with  me,  to  his  great  chagrin.  How  I  wished 
[206] 


THE  SENSUAL  EAR 


that  our  friend  of  the  "conventicles"  were 
there  to  decide  between  us — he  who  in  his 
youth  was  forbidden  to  accompany  his  friends 
to  Y.  P.  S.  C.  E.  meetings  as  he  might  have 
been  forbidden  to  go  to  dime-museums.  But 
he  has  no  ear — "sensuaF'or  other.  Perhaps  he 
could  not  have  helped. 

Our  Catholic  friend's  exhibit  gave  me  pause. 
I  knew  that  in  France  they  sing,  nowadays, 
hymns  unworthy  of  Gothic  architecture.  Not  so 
many  years  ago,  in  a  beautiful  French  cathe 
dral  which  I  was  by  way  of  frequenting,  I 
heard  the  children  of  some  sodality  or  con 
fraternity  pouring  forth  as  poor  a  piece  of 
holy  rag-time  as  any  conventicle  has  ever 
echoed.  It  jerked  me  back  into  the  past,  vio 
lently,  as  Hassan's  carpet  must  have  jerked  its 
fortunate  owner  through  space. 

Vierge,  notre  esperance, 

fitends  sur  nous  ton  bras, 

Sauve,  sauve  la  France, 
Ne  1'abandonne  pas, 
Ne  1'abandonne  pas. 

So  we  sang  it,  too,  at  the  Assomption,  in 
happier  days,  each  with  a  veil  and  a  candle, 
winding  in  and  out  among  the  green  alleys  of 
the  convent  park.  But  the  young  Tourangeaux 
went  on  to  sing  worse  things :  songs  less  catho 
lic,  more  evangelical,  with  words  more  bitter 
and  tones  more  shrill.  I  escaped,  to  return  only 

[207] 


MODES  AND   MORALS 


at  the  hour  of  Benediction,  when  I  knew  that 
the  UO  Salutaris  Hostia"  and  "Tantum  Ergo" 
would  mount  again  with  the  incense  towards 
the  rich  mediaeval  windows. 

I  fear  it  is  true,  as  our  Catholic  friend  said, 
that  the  Church  has  fallen  musically,  as  it  has 
done  architecturally,  on  evil  days.  Well:  these 
shrill  and  senseless  tunes  are  their  equivalent 
for  our  Moody  and  Sankey.  Even  in  conven 
ticles,  we  have  more  dignified  hymn-books  for 
use  in  "church"  as  opposed  to  Sunday-school  or 
Y.  P.  S.  C.  E.,  and  the  like.  And  as  our  Pri 
mary  Department  (of  the  Sunday-school)  was 
handed  over  to  the  works  of  Fanny  Crosby 
(did  she  write 

Roses  in  bloom, 

Filling  the  room, 

With  perfume  rich  and  rare. 

I  wonder?  Anyhow,  she  wrote  most  of  them), 
so  the  young  Catholics  in  both  France  and 
America  are  handed  over  to  the  musical  diva 
gations  of  ill-educated  priests.  It  is  a  pity;  for 
they  have  a  tradition  that  cannot  be  bettered. 
My  ancestors  sang  lustily  out  of  the  old  Bay 
Psalm  Book  : 

Ye  monsters  of  the  mighty  deep, 

Your  Maker's  praises  spout; 
Up  from  the  sands  ye  codlings  peep, 

And  wag  your  tails  about. 

But,  at  the  same  period,  their  ancestors  were 
singing  the  Latin  hymns  of  the  Middle  Ages  in 

[208] 


THE   SENSUAL  EAR 


undegenerate  solemnity.  It  is  natural  enough, 
perhaps,  that  I  should  have  emerged  on 
"There's  a  Light  in  the  Valley  for  Me";  but 
why  should  they  have  emerged  on  "Souvenez- 
vous,  Jesus,"  and  the  Mariolatrous  wailing  of 
"Im-mac-u-late,  Im-mac-u-laten  ?  Take  as  fine 
a  Protestant  hymn  as,  on  the  whole,  we  have 
inherited— "O  God,  Our  Help  in  Ages  Past." 
Its  tune  is,  to  my  thinking,  bad :  difficult  to  sing 
and  monotonous  to  hear.  But  in  the  very 
church  that  these  poor  French  infants  are  inno 
cently  desecrating,  a  few  hours,  more  or  less, 
see  a  whole  congregation  chanting,  with  pas 
sionless  and  awful  reverence, 

Parce,    Domine,    parce    populo    tuo;    nee    in    aeternum 
irascaris  nobis. 

Whoever  has  heard  that  welling  slowly 
from  crowded  choir,  nave,  and  transept,  the 
coifed  peasant  and  the  trained  seminariste  sing 
ing  in  unison  (no  staginess  of  part-singing 
there!),  and  has  joined  his  voice  to  the  multi 
tudinous  supplication,  will  not  cease  to  regret 
that  modern  vulgarity  is  as  Catholic  as  it  is 
Protestant. 

It  was  the  most  delightful  of  Huysmans's 
perversities  to  contend,  in  all  seriousness,  that 
the  Devil,  driven  out  of  an  immemorial  haunt 
of  his  own  near  Lourdes  by  the  advent  in  that 
spot  of  the  Blessed  Virgin,  took  his  sullen 
revenge  on  the  aesthetic  sense  of  her  priests. 
He  could  no  longer  hold  his  filthy  Sabbaths 

[209] 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


there;  but  he  could  and  did  bewitch  the  clergy 
into  making  Lourdes  a  thing  of  ugliness.  Their 
taste  went  wrong  with  everything  they  touched 
in  Lourdes;  and  while  Satan  could  not  prevent 
the  Blessed  Virgin  from  working  miracles,  he 
could  still  bring  it  about  that  the  faithful 
should  be  healed  amid  the  most  hideous 
architectural  surroundings.  Perhaps  Huysmans 
would  have  credited  the  modern  Catholic 
music  unhesitatingly  to  the  devil. 

But  certainly  Moody  and  Sankey  were  not 
clerics  of  Lourdes.  Nor  could  the  Presbyter 
ians  who  first  sang  the  rhymed  version  of  the 
Twenty-Third  Psalm  to  the  air  of  "So  bin  ich 
vergessen,  vergessen  bin  ich"  be  suspected  of 
any  part  in  the  Devil's  private  feuds  with  the 
Virgin.  Indeed,  the  particular  Presbyterians 
whom  I  have  heard  sing  it  thus  had  not,  I 
fancy,  much  more  reverence  for  the  one  than 
for  the  other. 

I  do  not  think  that  we  can  account  for  Gos 
pel  Hymns  No.  5  by  the  Huysmans  formula. 
Even  the  hymn  to  St.  Joseph,  beloved  of  sodal 
ities,  is,  I  believe,  mere  modern  pandering  to 
the  uncultured  majority:  revivalism  in  essence, 
like  Moody  and  Sankey  and  the  Salvation 
Army  and  Billy  Sunday.  But  at  least  the  Cath 
olics  have  this  advantage:  that  though  they 
too  have  indulged  in  operatic  music  and  have 
even  sunk  to  "Vierge,  notre  esperance,"  they 
still  hear  from  their  choirs  the  ancient  music 

[210] 


THE  SENSUAL   EAR 


and  the  ancient  words.  You  lose  the  sodalities 
and  confraternities  when  you  hear  once  more 
the  familiar  "Tantum  Ergo"  (I  do  not  mean 
the  florid  one  that  they  sing  at  St.  Roch  in 
Paris,  and  elsewhere) ;  the  new  vulgarity  is 
forgotten,  as  many  vulgarities  have  been 
touched  and  then  forgotten  by  Rome,  in  her 
time. 

I  used  to  think  that  the  worst  of  our  bad 
Protestant  hymns  was  their  ignoring  of  the 
human  intelligence. 

Many  giants  great  and  tall, 

Stalking  through  the  land, 
Headlong  to  the  earth  would  fall 

If  met  by  Daniel's  Band. 

(My  fortunate  husband  sang  it  in  his  youth.) 
But  even  that,  while  it  could  have  a  religious 
meaning,  I  should  say,  only  for  a  sub-normal 
intelligence,  is  not  a  deliberate  and  explicit  defi 
ance  of  the  intellect  of  man. 

Verbum  caro,  panem  verum 

Verbo  carnem  efficit: 
Fitque  sanguis  Christi  merum; 

Et  si  sensus  deficit, 
Ad  firmandum  cor  sincerum 

Sola  fides  sufficit. 

Tantum  ergo  sacramentum 

Veneremur  cernui, 
Et  antiquum  documentum 

Novo  cedat  ritui: 
Prcestet  fides  supplementum 

Sensuum  defectui. 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


It  took  St.  Thomas  Aquinas,  Doctor  Angelicus, 
thus  to  state,  in  one  supreme  utterance,  the 
whole  case  against  the  Higher  Criticism. 

No,  I  do  not  think  that  the  sense  of  a  hymn 
counts  so  much.  The  mediaeval  "Ave  Maris 
Stella"  has  not  much  more  to  recommend  it, 
philosophically  speaking,  than  the  hymn  with 
the  "Im-mac-u-late,  Im-mac-u-late"  refrain.  A 
poem,  even  a  religious  poem,  is  good  poetry  or 
bad  poetry,  and  that  is  all  there  is  to  it.  "From 
Greenland's  Icy  Mountains"  is  a  silly  poem, 
and  "The  Son  of  God  Goes  Forth  to  War"  is 
a  rather  fine  poem;  and  Bishop  Heber  wrote 
both.  But  the  permanent  superiority  of  the  lat 
ter  is  in  the  music  to  which  it  is  set.  One  Pres 
byterian  sect  sings,  I  believe,  nothing  but  the 
Psalms — rather  unfortunately  metricized,  to  be 
sure — and  their  church  singing  is  the  drear 
iest  in  the  world.  Yet  the  Psalms  are  rated 
high.  "Onward,  Christian  Soldiers"  gets  its 
appeal  from  Sir  Arthur  Sullivan  and  not  from 
the  author.  I  do  not  believe  that  "Nearer,  My 
God,  to  Thee"  would  have  been  the  favorite 
hymn  of  the  late  President  McKinley  were  it 
not  for  the  slow,  swinging  tempo,  which  needs 
only  a  little  quickening  to  be  an  excellent  waltz, 
with  all  the  emotional  appeal  of  good  waltz 
music. 

On  the  whole,  Hymns  Ancient  and  Mod 
ern  are  far  better,  from  the  point  of  view  of 
poetry,  than  Gospel  Hymns,  No.  5  —  but 


THE   SENSUAL   EAR 


they  have  not  converted  half  so  many  people. 
The  elect,  the  high-brows,  may  say  what  they 
like:  if  you  are  doing  your  evangelizing  on 
the  grand  scale,  the  "sensual  ear"  must  be 
pleased.  I  do  not  believe  that  the  music  I  have 
referred  to,  of  the  "Tantum  Ergo"  or  the 
"Parce,  Domine,"  would  ever  convert  the 
crowd  in  a  tent  or  a  tabernacle — even  if  D.  L. 
Moody  or  Fanny  Crosby  wrote  new  words  to 
it.  But  if  you  let  a  grammar-school  pupil  hack 
words  out  of  the  New  Testament  and  set  them 
to  the  tune  of  "Massa's  in  the  Cold,  Cold 
Ground" — well,  it  would  be  strange  if  some 
one  were  not  converted.  You  may  be  very  sure 
that  the  Roman  Catholic  Church  has  not  taken 
to  vulgar  and  catchy  hymns  without  a  set  pur 
pose  of  winning  souls. 

At  the  Cross,  at  the  Cross,  where  I  first  saw  the  light 
And  the  burden  of  my  sin  rolled  away, 

It  was  there  by  faith  I  received  my  sight, 
And  now  I  am  happy  all  the  day. 

The  last  line  might  almost  have  been  lifted 
bodily  from  one  of  Stephen  Foster's  negro 
melodies.  It  has  the  very  lilt  of 

My  old  Kentucky  home  far  away. 

And  it  is  only  one  of  many  in  Gospel  Hymns, 
No.  5.  That  is  why  my  husband  remembers 
them,  in  spite  of  himself.  He  may  contemn 
them,  but  he  cannot  forgot.  There  is  hardly 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


one  of  them  that  would  not  consort  happily 
with  the  right  kind  of  brass  band.  They  con 
note  crowds  and  the  "emotion  of  multitude." 
So,  to  me,  does  the  uParce,  Domine"  connote 
Crowds — but  crowds  awe-struck,  unweeping, 
and  in  no  mood  for  stimulation  by  a  cornet 
accompaniment.  There  is  a  cardinal  difference. 
The  success  of  almost  any  Gospel  Hymn  de 
pends  on  an  emotional  appeal  very  like  that  of 
Kipling's  banjo : 

And  the  tunes  that  mean  so  much  to  you  alone — 
Common  tunes  that  make  you  choke  and  blow  your  nose, 
Vulgar  tunes  that  bring  the  laugh  that  brings  the  groan — 
I  can  rip  your  very  heartstrings  out  with  those. 

Whatever  Bach  and  Palestrina  and  Scarlatti 
and  good  Gregorian  do  to  you — well,  it  is  not 
that.  Whereas  almost  any  good  Gospel  Hymn 
gets  you,  if  it  gets  you  at  all,  in  the  banjo  way. 
There  is  the  revivalistic  essence  in  all  of  them. 
And  when  the  Catholics  wish  to  be  revival 
istic,  they  imitate,  rather  badly,  the  Protestant 
"hymn-tune." 

Most  of  my  friends  are  so  truly  high-brow 
that  they  cannot  be  "got"  in  the  banjo  way. 
They  do  not  like  cornet  solos;  and  brass  bands 
playing  negro-melodies  leave  them  dry-eyed. 
They  honestly  prefer  the  Kniesel  Quartet  or  a 
Brahms  symphony.  Their  arid  and  exquisite 
asstheticism  rejects  these  low  appeals.  Did  I 
not  say  that  my  husband  loathes  "Throw  Out 


THE   SENSUAL  EAR 


the  Life-Line"  even  while  he  is  reducing  me  to 
an  emotional  crumple?  I  refuse  to  admit  that 
I  am  incapable  of  that  same  arid  and  exquisite 
aestheticism;  but  the  lower  appeal  reaches  me 
too.  I  do  weep  over  the  brass  bands.  I  do 
choke  over  the  flag  appropriately  carried.  I  do 
fall  in  love  (if  I  am  careful  to  shut  my  eyes) 
with  a  good  tenor  voice.  And  while  there  are, 
luckily,  a  great  many  people  like  my  husband, 
there  must  be  millions  more  like  me.  He  re 
members  the  Gospel  Hymns;  but  I  like  them. 
Not  quite  to  the  trail-hitting  point;  but  then 
I  fancy  the  hymns  of  the  tabernacle  are  less 
good  than  they  used  to  be.  I  do  not  know  the 
tune  of  "Brighten  the  Corner  Where  You 
Are."  Though  my  six-year-old  son  has  learned 
it  from  the  cook,  I  do  not  believe  he  has  the 
tune  right.  He  cannot  have  it  right:  if  it  were 
right,  there  would  be  no  sawdust  trail.  Nor  do 
I  know  the  music  of  "The  Brewer's  Big 
Horses  Cannot  Roll  Over  Me."  But  I  have  a 
suspicion  that  Billy  Sunday's  hymns  are  noth 
ing  like  so  good  as  Moody  and  Sankey.  The 
dance  music  of  the  day  always  has  its  effect 
on  popular  airs  of  every  kind,  even  religious. 
I  venture  to  say  (pace  the  shade  of  Lord 
Byron)  that  the  waltz,  throughout  the  nine 
teenth  century,  had  a  strong  religious  influence. 
Every  one  knows  that  good  waltz  music,  if 
played  slowly  enough,  is  the  saddest  thing  in 
the  world.  The  emotion  aroused  by  good  waltz 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


music  well  played  is  blood-brother  to  the  emo 
tion  aroused  by  "God  Be  with  You  Till  We 
Meet  Again'*  and  "For  You  I  Am  Praying, 
I'm  Praying  for  You."  Waltzes  and  Gospel 
Hymns  reinforce  each  other — which  is  prob 
ably  why  the  unco'  guid  object  to  dancing.  But 
with  all  due  allowances  for  mob-emotion  and 
the  sensual  ear,  I  cannot  believe  that  syncopa 
tion  serves  the  Lord.  People's  eyes  do  not 
grow  dim  as  they  listen  to  a  fox-trot.  It  does 
nothing  to  bring  forth  that  melting  sense  of 
universal  love  which  the  old  popular  music 
did.  All  waltz  music  was  in  essence  melan 
choly;  and  all  sentimental  melancholies  meet 
together  somewhere  in  the  recesses  of  the  vul 
gar  heart.  Yes:  when  popular  composers  were 
writing  good  waltzes,  it  was  easier  for  the  San- 
keys  and  Blisses  to  write  good  hymns.  The 
Y.  P.  S.  C.  E.  must  have  had  easier  work  with 
the  young  people  who  were  singing  "Marguer 
ite,"  than  it  has  now  with  the  young  people 
who  are  singing  "At  the  Garbage  Gentlemen's 
Ball."  I  have  a  notion  that  the  young  people 
who  are  singing  "At  the  Garbage  Gentlemen's 
Ball"  do  not  go  to  Y.  P.  S.  C.  E.  meetings  at 
all.  Well,  you  see,  those  who  sang  "Marguer 
ite"  did. 

Those  who  know  say  that  we  are  growing 
more  vulgar  all  the  time.  Perhaps  the  differ 
ence  between  D.  L.  Moody  and  Billy  Sunday 
is  a   good  index  of  that   degeneration.    Cer- 
F2i61 


THE   SENSUAL  EAR 


tainly  the  silly  young  things  who  wept  while 
they  sang  "God  Be  with  You  Till  We  Meet 
Again"  would  not  have  pretended  to  call 
Christ  up  on  the  telephone — or  have  per 
mitted  any  one  else  to  do  it  in  their  presence. 
But,  thank  Heaven,  the  conventicles  are  like  to 
outlast  the  tabernacle. 

At  all  events,  I  am  sure  of  one  thing:  that 
my  husband  will  not  be  persuaded,  twenty 
years  hence,  to  "oblige"  with  "The  Brewer's 
Big  Horses."  But  I  hope  he  will  continue  at 
intervals  to  oblige  with  "Throw  Out  the  Life- 
Line."  For,  so  long  as  he  does,  I  shall  con 
tinue  to  be  evangelized. 


BRITISH  NOVELISTS,  LTD. 

I  WAS  reading  a  novel,  the  other  day;  had 
got  about  half  way  through  it.  The  novel 
in  question  was  by  one  of  the  younger  Eng 
lish  authors.  It  was  very  odd,  I  thought  to 
myself  as  I  perused  it,  that  I  should  not  (for 
I  read  a  great  deal  of  fiction)  have  read  be 
fore  anything  by  Mr.  D.  H.  Lawrence.  I  had 
always  meant  to,  but  his  work  had,  for  some 
reason  or  other,  not  come  my  way.  And  I  was 
glad  I  was  reading  it.  I  ought  to  have  done 
D.  H.  Lawrence  before.  Some  people  had  told 
me  he  was  "different."  He  was  not  so  different 
as  all  that;  still,  there  was  something  fresh 
about  him.  Perhaps  one  could  differentiate 
within  that  group,  though  I  had  long  since 
despaired  of  doing  so.  I  would  certainly  get 
something  else  of  D.  H.  Lawrence's.  At  that 
point  I  decided  to  go  to  bed,  and  shut  the  book 
up  smartly.  The  cover  revealed  to  me  that  the 
author  was  J.  D.  Beresford.  Why  I  had  ever 
thought  it  was  D.  H.  Lawrence,  I  do  not 
know.  Some  false  association  of  ideas  at  the 
moment  of  borrowing  it,  probably. 

The  joke  is  on  me,  as  the  younger  genera 
tion  would  say.  And  yet,  there  is  something  to 
be  said  on  my  side.  The  fact  is  that  I  had  not 


BRITISH  NOFELISTS,  LTD. 


expected  D.  H.  Lawrence  to  be  one  whit  dif 
ferent  from  Hugh  Walpole,  J.  D.  Beresford, 
Compton  Mackenzie,  Gilbert  Cannan,  Oliver 
Onions,  and  W.  L.  George.  I  found,  I  thought, 
a  little  difference:  not  much,  but  enough  to 
give  one  hope.  To  be  sure,  the  hope  would 
have  ebbed,  in  any  case,  before  the  book  was 
finished.  My  only  gain  was  the  knowledge  that 
Mr.  Beresford  can  do  something  besides  Jacob 
Stahl.  I  have  yet  to  experience  D.  H.  Law 
rence.  Still,  I  submit  that  when,  to  distinguish 
between  one  author  and  another,  you  are  satis 
fied  with  so  tiny  a  difference  in  style  as  appears 
between  two  works  by  the  same  man,  it  means 
that  differences  in  style  within  that  particular 
group  are  not  very  startling.  One  would  never 
have  read  half  of  Tess  and  taken  it  for  the 
work  of  Henry  James;  or  half  of  Nostromo 
and  taken  that  for  the  work  of  Meredith.  One 
would  have  been  brought  up  standing  at  the 
first  page.  It  may  be,  as  I  say,  that  D.  H. 
Lawrence  is  going  to  be  to  me,  some  day,  a 
revelation  of  individuality.  But  the  reviews  do 
not  give  one  much  hope  of  that. 

Now,  there  are  three  authors  in  England 
who  stand  a  little  away  from  this  larger  group, 
though  they  are  not  precisely  contemporaries 
of  Hardy  or  of  Conrad.  Wells  and  Bennett  and 
Galsworthy  have  some  individuality  of  style.  A 
chapter  of  Mr.  Wells  is  "different."  A  chapter 
of  Arnold  Bennett  or  of  Mr.  Galsworthy  is  dif- 
[219] 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


ferent.  Or  let  me  put  it  in  this  way.  You  would 
not  get  through  half  of  any  one  of  Mr.  Wells's 
later  novels  without  a  deal  of  pseudo-philosoph 
ical  reflection  on  the  scheme  of  things.  You 
would  not  read  so  far  in  any  book  by  Mr.  Arn 
old  Bennett  without  meeting  and  recognizing 
his  peculiar  kind  of  humor:  semi-grin,  semi- 
farcical.  And  I  am  sure  that  you  would  not  get 
through  many  chapters  of  a  typical  Galsworthy 
novel  without  hearing  a  bird  calling  to  its  mate 
— not  if  there  were  a  human  love  affair  going 
on.  I  do  not  think  you  could  comfortably  sit 
down  with  any  one  of  them  for  half  an  evening 
and  think  that  you  were  reading  D.  H.  Law 
rence.  You  would  know  whom  you  were  read 
ing. 

These  three  gentlemen  have,  of  course,  been 
writing  longer  than  the  aforesaid  younger 
group.  They  are,  one  might  say,  the  elder 
brothers  of  the  brood.  If  any  one  of  them  has 
served  as  model  to  the  younger  fry,  it  is  Mr. 
Wells.  None  of  the  younger  fry  has  ever 
approached  the  technical  excellence  of  Kipps-, 
but,  on  the  other  hand,  almost  any  one  of  them 
could  have  written  Ann  Veronica.  Mr.  Wells 
has  certainly  led  them  all  astray  in  his  time. 
But  there  is  another  equally  important  thing 
to  be  said:  Mr.  Wells  has  gone  on.  In  his  later 
phases,  he  stands  quite  apart  from  them  all. 
The  Research  Magnificent  and  Mr.  Britling 
Sees  It  Through  are  perfectly  individual:  they 

[220] 


BRITISH  NOVELISTS,  LTD. 


are  not,  and  never  could  have  been,  the 
product  of  a  syndicate.  Time  was  when  Wells 
and  Bennett  seemed  to  be  drawing  near  each 
other.  Tono-Bungay  is  Bennett-ish  in  spots; 
and  Bealby  is,  superficially,  almost  straight 
Bennett.  But  Mr.  Wells,  for  weal  or  woe,  has 
always  been  interested  in  the  social  scheme. 
The  most  important  thing  in  Tono-Bungay 
is  Bladesover  and  Bladesover's  moral  effect; 
and  even  in  the  ridiculous  Bealby  there  is 
more  than  an  echo  of  Bladesover.  Mr.  Wells 
is  interested  in  moral  values.  Sometimes  he  has 
had  very  queer  notions  about  them;  but  his 
reward  for  having  been  perpetually  preoccu 
pied  with  them  is  to  have  won  through  to 
The  Research  Magnificent  and  Mr.  Britling. 
You  may  not  agree  with  the  hero  of  either 
book;  but  at  least  he  is  a  person  for  whom  you 
have  respect.  His  is  a  dignified  moral  reaction, 
even  if  it  is  not  the  moral  reaction  you  would 
have  preferred.  He  is  a  serious  person,  envis 
aging  his  relations  to  the  world  in  a  serious 
temper. 

One  does  not  see  Mr.  Bennett's  characters 
thus  envisaging  the  world;  not,  at  all  events, 
since  The  Old  Wives9  Tale.  And  even  in 
The  Old  Wives9  Tale  you  feel  rather  the 
deterministic  net  in  which  the  characters  are 
caught,  than  any  personal  decisions  of  their 
own.  The  moral  of  the  book  is  that  heredity 
is  more  powerful  than  environment,  if  these 
[221  ] 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


two  come  to  grips.  In  the  later  books,  when 
they  are  not,  like  Denry  the  Audacious  and 
Buried  dlive,  delicious  bits  of  fooling,  you 
get  men  and  women  of  a  monstrous  egotism, 
of  whom  it  cannot  be  discerned  that  either 
heredity  or  environment  explicitly  controls 
them  against  their  will.  An  acute  critic,  who 
has  incidentally  had  his  own  say  about  Wells 
and  Bennett,  told  me  the  other  day  that  he 
thought  Bennett's  people  had  "character."  I 
should  have  said  rather  that  they  were  "char 
acters,"  in  the  colloquial  sense.  They  have  self- 
assertiveness ;  like  Aunty  Hamps,  they  may  sub 
jugate  their  world.  But  "character"  ?  No :  that 
is  a  finer,  more  complicated  possession.  They 
want  things,  sometimes  good  things  and  some 
times  bad;  but  they  are  (especially  the  women) 
blond  beasts  as  to  their  methods.  If  there  is, 
on  the  whole,  a  less  decent  creature  in  modern 
fiction  than  Hilda  Lessways,  or  a  more  idiotic 
one  than  Audrey  Moze,  I  have  still  to  encoun 
ter  her.  They  invoke  their  gods 

By  the  hunger  of  change  and  emotion, 
By  the  thirst  of  unbearable  things. 

Ann  Veronica,  as  I  once  tried  to  point  out,  is 
not  true  to  life :  she  is  a  nice  girl  who  proceeds 
to  have  reactions  that  a  nice  girl  does  not  have 
without  a  lot  of  intervening  history.  Hilda  is 
never  a  nice  girl;  she  is  a  monster  from  the 
start  and  to  the  finish.  As  for  Audrey — pace 

[222] 


BRITISH  NOVELISTS,  LTD. 


Mr.  Bennett — she  is  a  "moron,"  or  very  near  it. 
Mr.  Bennett  spends  more  time  on  his  female 
than  on  his  male  characters.  He  began  with  the 
evident  intention  of  "doing"  young  Clayhanger. 
But  poor  Clayhanger  eventually  turned  into 
Hilda's  daily  bread.  He  exists  only  to  be  masti 
cated  by  her.  She  lifts  her  head  from  that  "fiero 
pasto,"  immitigable  as  Ugolino. 

Now,  I  may  well  be  accused,  by  Mr.  Ben 
nett's  admirers,  of  a  belated  Victorianism,  be 
cause  I  do  not  like  his  Hildas  and  Leonoras 
and  Audreys.  Well,  I  do  not  like  Balzac's  Val 
erie  Marneffe;  yet  surely  La  Cousine  Bette 
is  one  of  the  great  novels  of  the  nineteenth 
century.  Henry  James,  some  years  ago,  drew 
a  distinction  between  Thackeray  and  Balzac  in 
their  treatment  of  unpleasant  characters;  in 
sisting  that  Thackeray  did  not  give  his  a  fair 
chance.  "Balzac  loved  his  Valerie  as  Thack 
eray  did  not  love  his  Becky,"  said  Mr.  James. 
However  much  Balzac  loved  his  Valerie,  he 
did  not  love  her  to  the  point  of  trying  to  make 
us  think  her  delightful.  The  love  he  bore  her 
was  a  love  as  impersonal  as  the  right  hand 
of  Rhadamanthus :  a  love  that  consented  to 
be  just.  Balzac  may  have  loved  his  Valerie  as 
Thackeray  did  not  love  his  Becky;  but  he  did 
not  love  his  Valerie  as  Mr.  Bennett  loves  his 
Hilda  and  his  Audrey.  He  loved  her,  that  is, 
in  a  quite  different  sense.  Mr.  Bennett  posi 
tively  seems  to  think  that  Hilda  is  as  decent 
[223  ] 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


as  any  one  else,  and  more  interesting  than  most 
people.  If  he  does  not  really  think  so,  then  his 
method  is  at  fault,  and  his  books  belie  him. 
His  method  is  not  at  fault  in  Denry,  because 
there  is  no  implication  anywhere  that  Denry 
exists  in  a  moral  sense:  he  is  a  "card,"  and 
only  a  "card."  It  is  never  hinted  that  we  ought 
to  take  him  seriously.  He  is  merely  funny;  the 
humor  of  him  is  the  moral  equivalent  of  an 
obstacle  race  or  the  pursuit  of  a  greased  pig. 
If  only  Mr.  Bennett  would  keep  to  his 
Denrys !  For  in  the  realm  of  extravaganza  he 
is  irresistible.  Also,  when  he  does  the  detail  of 
the  Five  Towns,  he  is  delightful  for  sheer  con 
vincingness.  But  he  must  stick  to  concrete  de 
tail.  He  must  not  deal  with  the  human  soul, 
for  when  he  comes  to  moral  reactions,  he  shows 
that  he  has  no  conception  of  differences.  Mr. 
Bennett's  world,  frankly,  seems  to  me  like  the 
world  of  the  dead  as  described  by  the  poet: 

Outside  of  all  the  worlds  and  ages, 
There  where  the  fool  is  as  the  sage  is, 

There  where  the  slayer  is  clean  of  blood; 
No  end,  no  passage,  no  beginning, 
There  where  the  sinner  leaves  off  sinning, 

There  where  the  good  man  is  not  good. 

There  is  not  one  thing  with  another, 

But  Evil  saith  to  Good :    My  brother, 

My  brother,  I  am  one  with  thee. 

His  world  is  a  world  where  Evil  saith  to  Good: 
"My  brother,  I  am  one  with  thee."  If  he  can- 

[224] 


BRITISH  NOVELISTS,  LTD. 


not  write  us  another  Old  Wives'  Tale,  we 
must  at  least  hope,  as  I  say,  that  he  will  stick 
to  Denry  and  Alice  Challis.  The  Lion's 
Share  does  'not  give  much  promise  that  he 
will  do  a  second  Old  Wives'  Tale.  He  has  a 
positive  fondness  for  mean  people ;  people  who 
walk  blind  through  a  world  with  beauty  in 
it;  people  who  think  their  own  emotions  su 
premely  valuable  simply  because  they  are  their 
own. 

The  realists,  I  know,  have  always  contended 
that  an  author  should  be  impersonal;  that  he 
should  not  have  an  "attitude" ;  that  he  should 
record  life  as  it  is,  without  comment.  Into  the 
possibility  or  impossibility  of  that  feat  (the 
old  technical  controversy)  we  need  not  go, 
here  and  now.  The  general  opinion  is  that  you 
can  tell  where  an  author  stands,  in  spite  of 
him.  Certainly  Mr.  Bennett  is  not  impersonal; 
he  does  have  an  attitude.  Not  in  any  of  the 
permitted  ways  (comment  of  other  characters, 
logical  and  retributive  results  of  committed 
acts,  etc.)  does  he  show  himself  suspicious  of 
his  people's  real  natures,  or  disapproving  of 
their  odiousness.  If  he  were  only  scourging, 
satirist-fashion,  the  egotism  of  mankind,  one 
could  bear  it.  But  no:  Mr.  Bennett  seems  to 
love  his  Yahoos.  If  he  does  not  love  them, 
then,  as  I  say,  his  methods  are  at  fault. 

Another  author  who  has  gone  dwindling  is 
Mr.  Galsworthy.  Tremendous  hopes  of  him 

[225] 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


and  of  our  permanent  joy  in  him,  we  had 
when  The  Man  of  Property  appeared.  And, 
of  course,  one  knows  people  who  stick  to  him 
for  his  "style."  One  does  not  quite  know  why: 
as  style,  it  cannot  touch  either  Mr.  Wells's  or 
Mr.  Bennett's  style.  I  fancy  it  is  because  there 
will  always  be  a  perceptible  number  of  people 
who  are  reverent  before  long  descriptions  of 
nature.  Nature,  when  it  gets  into  a  book,  is 
somehow  sacred.  Perhaps  it  is  Wordsworth's 
fault.  Literary  pieties  die  hard.  Anyhow, 
there  always  are  long  descriptions  of  nature 
in  Mr.  Galsworthy's  novels,  and  if  they  are 
delicately  confused  with  mating  animals  and 
human  sex  impulses,  and  all  the  connotation 
of  stirring  sap  and  swelling  buds  and  the  like, 
that  will  certainly  not  make  them  any  less 
popular.  Yet  the  fact  is  that  Mr.  Galsworthy 
has  gone  on,  from  book  to  book,  steadily  be 
coming  more  sentimental  and  more  flabby. 
I  am  speaking  here  of  his  novels.  His  Five 
Tales  hold  their  own  with  The  Man  of  Prop 
erty.  His  work  cannot  be  called  rich  in  situa 
tions,  since  he  has  never,  so  far,  failed  to  repeat 
(I  think  I  am  not  mistaken)  the  same  situation : 
a  man  in  love  with  some  woman  he  has  no 
legal  right  to  be  in  love  with.  Often,  that  is 
a  very  interesting  situation;  but  it  is  not  the 
only  source  of  drama  in  life,  and  one  does  get 
tired  of  it.  And  I  do  not  think  that  Mr.  Gals 
worthy  makes  it  any  more  interesting  or  sym- 

[226] 


BRITISH  NOVELISTS,  LTD. 


pathetic  by  constantly  involving  the  vegetable 
world,  or  by  punctuating  every  declaration  of 
unlawful  love  with  the  calls  of  mating  birds. 
One  is  tempted  to  assure  him  that  "The  flow 
ers  that  bloom  in  the  spring  (tra-la!)  have 
nothing  to  do  with  the  case.'7  But  the  sanity 
of  W.  S.  Gilbert  is  gone  from  among  us. 

With  Thomas  Hardy,  one  feels  at  least  the 
reality  of  this  intrusion  of  external  nature; 
because,  as  some  critic  (I  think,  Mr.  W.  J. 
Dawson)  has  said,  his  people  are  children  of 
the  soil  in  no  trite  sense.  They  are  akin  to  the 
landscape  in  which  they  move;  they  seem,  that 
is,  to  have  a  personal  relation  to  Gala,  like 
mortals  in  an  old  myth;  to  be  half  man,  half 
rock  or  tree.  They  are  apotheoses  of  the 
power  of  natural  environment.  But  Mr.  Gals 
worthy's  civilized  people  run  down  from  town 
to  hold  hands  amid  the  bracken  because  they 
feel  that  they  are  somehow  justified  by  the 
fact  of  sap.  It  is  all  vague,  of  course;  any 
thing  of  that  sort  is  bound  to  be  vague.  And 
if  you  are  going  to  lean  heavily  on  the  cosmos, 
you  want  first  to  be  sure  that  your  point 
d'appui  is  not  a  spot  where  the  cosmic  force 
has  chosen  to  manifest  itself  in  vapor. 

Mr.  Galsworthy  seems  not  to  know  in  the 
least  what  he  thinks  about  life.  That  state  of 
maze  may  be  satisfying  to  a  hyper-sensitive 
soul,  but  it  does  not  make  for  style.  Besides, 
Mr.  Galsworthy  is  old  enough  to  have  some 

[227] 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


idea  as  to  what  he  does  think  about  life.  As 
far  as  one  can  make  out,  he  thinks  that  most 
people  are  sensual,  that  everybody  ought  to 
be  kind,  and  that  there  is  a  sustaining  sanction 
for  sex  emotion  in  the  fauna  and  flora  of 
England.  I  do  not  know  what  Mr.  Gals 
worthy's  totem  is ;  but  it  should  be  some  small, 
defenceless  bird.  The  snipe,  perhaps. 

Justice  is  said  to  have  had  a  profound 
effect  on  English  officials.  Of  that,  one  is  glad; 
but  one's  quarrel  with  Mr.  Galsworthy  is  that 
he  will  never  think  anything  out.  He  inveighs 
against  solitary  confinement,  which  is  a  good 
thing  to  do;  but  he  does  not  offer  any  sub 
stitute  solution,  which  would  be  an  even  better 
thing  to  do.  He  sentimentalizes  over  dead 
pheasants  and  dead  everything;  but  he  gives 
you  no  suggestions  as  to  what  kind  of  laws 
to  pass.  He  objects  to  existing  divorce  laws, 
but  he  does  not  come  out  into  the  open  and 
say  just  what  divorce  laws,  if  any,  he  would 
propose  to  enact.  It  is  not,  apparently,  either 
cowardice  or  expediency  on  his  part;  it  is 
sheer  inability  to  think  constructively  in  any 
way.  That  is  characteristic  of  many  modern 
reformers:  they  want  the  bars  let  down  here 
or  there,  but  they  never  tell  you  in  what  spot 
the  bars  ought  to  be  set  up  again.  Beyond 
their  gentle  impulses,  they  are  perfectly  vague. 
It  comes,  I  suppose,  of  trying  to  do  your 
thinking  with  your  heart  instead  of  with  your 

[228] 


BRITISH  NOVELISTS,  LTD. 


head.  And  in  Mr.  Galsworthy's  case,  the 
vagueness  has  permeated  to  the  last  recesses 
of  his  style.  It  is  rhetorically  accurate — "the 
English  of  a  gentleman" — but  it  is  jejune  and 
spineless.  It  has  become,  you  might  say,  a 
purely  vegetarian  meal.  Only  the  graminivor 
ous  should  read  the  later  Galsworthy.  And  he 
will  not  rid  himself  of  that  fault  by  being 
increasingly  explicit  about  sexual  emotions.  In 
fact,  that  never  was  his  game. 

I  may  seem  to  speak  bitterly.  I  confess  that 
I  feel  some  bitterness.  For  I  admired  The 
Man  of  Property  exceedingly,  and  looked  to 
Mr.  Galsworthy  to  carry  on  a  great  tradition 
of  fiction.  Instead  of  which,  he  has  gone  on 
backing,  backing — farther  and  farther  away 
from  the  Presence.  Some  people,  I  know,  gave 
him  up  with  The  Patrician  because,  they  said, 
it  was  straight  Mrs.  Humphry  Ward.  I  gave 
him  up  forever  with  The  Freelands  because 
it  was  bad  Mrs.  Humphrey  Ward;  in  fact,  The 
Coryston  Family  was  much  better. 

Now  we  come  to  our  syndicate.  With  which 
shall  we  begin?  It  is  hard  to  choose.  Indeed, 
can  you  deal  with  them  separately?  For  the 
outstanding  fact  is  that  they  all  write  alike; 
that  they  deal  in  the  same  characters,  the  same 
backgrounds,  and  the  same  situations;  and 
that  they  have  the  same  point  of  view.  They 
are  like  the  Pleiade  or  the  seven  New  Real 
ists.  Only  they  do  not  know  it.  At  least,  they 
[229] 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


give  no  sign  of  intending  to  be  several  peas  in 
one  pod.  Yet  you  would  almost  say  that  none 
of  them  had  ever  read  anything  but  the  works 
of  the  others.  Is  there  some  master-mind 
behind  them,  some  literary  Lloyd  George  or 
Dr.  Fu-Manchu,  who  assigns  their  tasks;  who 
says  that  Mr.  Beresford,  not  Mr.  Walpole, 
shall  write  of  Jacob  Stahl,  and  that  Mr.  Mac 
kenzie,  not  Mr.  W.  L.  George,  shall  deal 
with  Michael  Fane?  And  does  Mr.  Walpole 
sneak  off  o'  nights  to  Mr.  Beresford  and  offer 
to  do  some  Jacob  Stahl  if  Mr.  Beresford 
will  take  a  few  chapters  of  Fortitude  off 
his  hands?  Does  Mr.  Mackenzie  write  a  page 
of  A  Prelude  to  Adventure  while  Mr.  Wal 
pole  takes  a  turn  at  Sinister  Street?  Who 
does  the  murders?  Is  it  Mr.  Walpole  or  Mr. 
Onions?  Which  one  of  them  has  been  ap 
pointed  to  frequent  the  Empire?  Does  Mr. 
George  investigate  female  psychology  for  the 
group?  And  what  (but  this  I  cannot  even 
guess)  does  Mr.  D.  H.  Lawrence  "cover"? 
This  may  seem  to  be  mere  petulance,  but 
it  is  not.  The  chief  value  of  fiction  is,  I  take 
it,  to  provide  us  with  vicarious  experience.  A 
great  novelist  who  sticks  to  the  truth  is,  above 
all,  informing.  We  enlarge  our  own  world  by 
reading  him.  No  one,  in  his  own  person,  can 
investigate  all  social  milieux  in  all  civilized 
lands;  and  the  big  novels  and  the  big  plays 
are  text-books  to  the  humanist.  How  much 

[230] 


BRITISH  NOVELISTS,  LTD. 


intimate  knowledge  of  France  should  we  lose 
if  we  lost  Balzac;  how  much  intimate  knowl 
edge  of  England  if  we  lost  the  great  Victor 
ians!  Did  we  really,  before  the  war,  know 
anything  about  the  Russian  soul  and  tempera 
ment  except  what  we  got  from  the  Russian 
novelists?  Most  of  us  get  our  India  from 
Kipling.  There  are  not  wanting  people  to 
quarrel  with  Kipling's  interpretation,  even 
with  his  description;  but  the  fact  remains  that 
a  vast  number  of  people  know  a  few  simple 
facts  about  Indian  and  Anglo-Indian  life  that 
they  would  never  have  known  without  him. 

So  that  it  is  really  not  only  the  monotony, 
but  the  wilful  extravagance,  of  the  British 
syndicate  that  we  complain  of.  Why  waste 
half  a  dozen  authors  and  a  round  score  of 
novels  to  tell  us  the  same  thing  in  the  same 
way?  They  do  not  even  react  differently  to 
the  same  facts:  they  react  precisely  alike.  Per 
haps  that  is  valuable  as  reinforcing  and  em 
phasizing  the  stated  or  implied  opinion.  But 
one  has  the  sense  that  one  is  never  going  to 
learn  anything  more  from  any  of  them;  and 
that  is  discouraging  to  the  humanist,  on  vicar 
ious  experience  bent.  Perhaps  one  should  ex 
cept  Mr.  Walpole  from  that  charge,  to  this 
extent:  he  gave  us  something  new  in  The 
Dark  Forest.  In  that  book,  at  least,  he  made 
the  Russians  pleasanter  than  any  of  their  own 
novelists  (except  possibly  Turgenev)  have 

[231] 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


succeeded  in  making  them.  But  even  so,  if 
someone  should  tell  us  that  Mr.  Walpole,  in 
the  flesh,  went  to  Russia  to  work  with  an 
ambulance  corps,  and  that  Mr.  Beresford  or 
Mr.  Mackenzie  wrote  The  Dark  Forest  from 
Mr.  Walpole's  notes,  who  could,  from  any 
internal  evidence,  deny  it?  If  they  were  all 
Elizabethans,  the  scholars  would  still  be 
wrangling  over  problems  of  their  collabora 
tion.  Their  novels  would  be  like  the  Beaumont- 
Fletcher-Middleton-Rowley  plays. 

To  begin  with,  there  is  always  the  same 
young  man.  Sometimes  he  has  a  university 
education,  and  then  he  is  the  hero  of  Sinis 
ter  Street  or  The  Stranger's  Wedding',  some 
times  he  has  omitted  the  university,  and  then 
he  is  the  hero  of  Jacob  Stahl  or  Fortitude. 
He  has  usually  decided,  when  we  meet  him, 
that  there  is  nothing  in  religion;  he  is  usually 
anxious  to  do  something  noble  and  unconven 
tional;  and  sooner  or  later  he  nearly  always 
encounters  very  seriously  a  young  woman 
of,  actually  or  potentially,  light  morals. 
Sometimes  he  is  rich  and  meets  her  at  the 
Empire;  sometimes  he  is  poor  and  meets  her 
in  the  slums.  Sometimes  it  is  an  accident,  but 
usually  he  might  fairly  be  said  to  be  looking 
for  her.  For  he  is  humanitarian,  always;  either 
by  his  gentle  nature,  or  because  socialistic 
arguments  have  got  hold  of  him;  and  a  good 
deal  of  space  is  always  given  up  to  sheer  in- 

[232] 


BRITISH  NOVELISTS,  LTD. 


tellectual  worrying.  It  is  worrying — it  seldom 
"gets"  anywhere;  and  though  Mr.  Wells' s  peo 
ple  "worry"  similarly,  and  do  not  always  get 
anywhere,  still,  with  Mr.  Wells,  you  feel  as  if 
those  men  would,  perhaps,  sometime  win 
through  to  a  philosophy  of  their  own.  They 
go  at  it  in  a  more  mature  fashion;  and  they 
possess  themselves  of  information.  There  is 
something  of  the  hard  scientific  temper  in  his 
men.  They  are  more  apt  to  have  got  their 
humanitarianism  out  of  a  laboratory  than  out 
of  their  first  sight  of  Piccadilly  Circus  at 
night.  Mr.  Wells's  men,  when  they  are  likable 
at  all,  are  likable  for  some  intellectual  quality 
in  them,  for  their  attitude  to  ideas.  When  the 
syndicate's  men  are  likable,  it  is  for  sheer  pity, 
because  they  are  such  helpless  young  fools. 

One  expects  every  one  in  fiction,  nowadays, 
to  be  an  egotist;  but  one  does  sometimes  sigh 
for  the  old  days  when  an  egotist  knew  enough 
to  be  polite.  No  one,  I  think,  could  feel  any 
affection  for  Jacob  Stahl;  but  it  is  possible  to 
feel  affection  for  Michael  Fane,  though  it  is 
perfectly  impossible  to  feel  him  important, 
except  as  a  householder  always  is  important. 
Perhaps  the  most  charming  thing  one  remem 
bers  in  any  of  these  novels  (they  do  not 
abound  in  charm)  is  the  description  of  Oxford 
undergraduate  life  in  Sinister  Street.  And 
it  leads  to — what?  Michael's  conscientious  and 
pathetic  progress  among  prostitutes  and  ruf- 

[233] 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


fians.  Luckily,  he  does  not,  in  the  end,  marry 
Lily;  but  he  is  saved  from  it  by  mere  accident. 
There  was  no  reason  to  suppose  that  destiny 
would  play  on  his  side. 

This  excursion  into  the  underworld  has  be 
come,  in  English  fiction,  almost  as  much  de 
rigueur  for  a  young  gentleman  as  the  grand 
tour  used  to  be.  Sometimes  it  is  curiosity  that 
urges  him;  but  it  is  more  apt  to  be  a  kind  of 
humanitarian  sympathy.  The  adventure  is  not 
new:  one  remembers,  after  all,  Richard  Fev- 
erel.  But  the  temper  in  which  it  is  taken  is 
new.  Richard  was  a  chivalrous  young  fool; 
but  then  Mrs.  Mount  was  something  out  of 
the  ordinary.  He  did  not,  at  first,  dream  what 
she  was;  and  when  he  found  out,  she  was  able 
to  lure  him  to  think  well  of  her.  These  young 
gentlemen  we  are  considering  do  not  have  to 
be  lured  to  think  well  of  the  young  women 
they  altruistically  encounter.  They  know  be 
fore  they  meet  them  what  they  are  going  to 
be.  They  cultivate  them  because  they  are  that, 
or  are  obviously  going  to  be  that.  They  prefer 
the  girl  of  the  lower  classes;  prefer  marriage 
with  her  or  free  love  with  her,  as  the  case 
may  be.  They  find  her  more  interesting,  just 
as  a  settlement-worker  finds  the  slums  more 
interesting.  The  difference  between  them  and 
the  settlement-worker  is  that  they  are  not  out 
to  convert  her  to  religion  or  even  to  better 
manners.  They  are  perfectly  naive  in  their 

[234] 


BRITISH  NOVELISTS,  LTD. 


refusal  to  perceive  differences.  They  have  a 
preconceived  notion  to  the  effect  that  there 
are  no  differences;  and  to  that  notion  they 
often  sacrifice  themselves.  Sometimes  they  sac 
rifice  the  girl. 

You  see,  they  do  not  think  much  of  mar 
riage,  these  young  men.  Jacob  Stahl  insists  on 
going  off  to  a  solitary  cottage  with  Betty  Gale, 
unblessed.  (Of  course,  he  does  have  a  wife  in 
the  background.)  He  never  quite  forgives  her 
for  wanting  to  be  a  legal  wife.  Though,  char 
acteristically  enough,  by  the  time  she  has  rec 
onciled  herself  to  the  irregularity  (as  any 
decent  woman  would  have  somehow  to  do,  if 
she  were  going  to  endure  it)  his  wife  dies, 
and  he  insists  on  Betty's  marrying  him  so  that 
they  can  have  children.  Ann  Veronica  over 
again!  But,  indeed,  Mr.  Beresford  has  it  in 
for  marriage  anyhow.  I  know  of  nothing  more 
pathetic  in  modern  fiction  than  the  way  Dick 
Lynneker,  brought  up  among  gentlefolk,  suc 
cessful  in  his  own  career,  in  love  with  a  girl 
of  his  own  class,  has  to  cast  about  in  his 
mind  for  some  way  of  squaring  that  conven 
tional  situation  with  his  radicalism.  Up  to  that 
time,  his  only  chance  has  been  in  approving  of 
his  sister's  elopement  with  the  village  carpen 
ter.  Now  he  is  in  love  himself,  and  there  is  no 
obstacle,  social  or  financial,  to  his  happiness. 
But  he  has  not  protested  against  convention 
all  his  young  life,  only  to  sit  down  and  be 

[2351 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


comfortable  now  in  a  conventional  situation. 
Listen : 

'  'I  never  tried  to  fight  against  my  love  for 
you,  dear,  after  that  first  day  at  Oakstone,' 
he  went  on.  'I  hadn't  ever  cared  before  for 
anyone  like  this.  I've  never  had  any  sort  of 
love-affair.  And  now,  I  want  .  .  .  .' 

"She  clung  to  him  eagerly.  What  do  you 
want,  darling?  she  asked,  and  then  added  in- 
consequently,  'I  feel  such  a  little  thing.' 

"He  drew  her  down  to  her  knees  and  knelt 
before  her  in  the  darkness.  'I  want  our  love 
to  be  all  our  own.  I  don't  want  it  talked  about 
and  stared  at.  If  we  get  married,  it  must  be 
as  quietly  as  possible — and  it  must  be  after 
wards,  if  you  know  what  I  mean,  dear?  That 
legal  business  isn't  for  us  at  all;  it's  only  a 
kind  of  registration.  Our  love  hasn't  anything 
to  do  with  anyone  else.  We  must  make  our 
vows  without  witnesses.  Do  you  know  what  I 
mean,  dear?  Don't  you  feel  like  that,  too?' 

"He  felt  her  heart  throbbing  violently 
against  his;  and  they  clung  to  each  other  like 
two  frightened  children.  There,  in  the  stillness 
and  the  darkness,  the  world  had  vanished  and 
they  were  alone;  and  afraid;  and  yet  passion 
ately  desirous  to  draw  closer  together. 

4  'Oh !  Dickie,  I  do  love  you  so,'  she  whis 
pered,  as  she  put  her  lips  to  his." 

Mr.  Beresford  never  tells  us  whether  or 
not  Dick  put  his  idea  through.  Sybil  was  the 

[236] 


BRITISH  NOVELISTS,  LTD. 


niece  of  a  bishop.  But  then,  Mr.  Beresford 
made  her.  Perhaps  Dick  succeeded.  The  impli 
cation  certainly  is  that  he  was  going  to 
succeed. 

Now,  I  honestly  think  that  pathetic.  Not 
nearly  so  shocking  as  it  is  pathetic.  For  the 
author  is  looking  for  the  realities  of  life  in 
the  wrong  place.  Every  lover  knows  the  sense 
of  shrinking  from  a  public  ceremony.  I  doubt 
if  any  two  people  deeply  in  love  with  each 
other  would  choose,  for  their  own  sakes,  a 
"wedding."  Dick  Lynneker  need  not  think 
that  his  great  idea  is  new.  But  look  at  the  mad 
egotism  of  it!  Take  it  that  the  legal  or  the 
ecclesiastical  ceremony  is  merely  a  heavy  price 
that  one  has  to  pay.  Is  that  happiness  not 
worth  paying  for?  Generations  of  lovers  have 
thought  that  it  was.  Suppose,  even,  that  you 
think  it  not  so  much  too  heavy  as  the  wrong 
kind  of  payment — something  unjustly,  shame 
lessly  exacted  of  you,  that  should  never  have 
been  exacted  at  all;  a  sort  of  Oriental 
"squeeze."  Other  lovers,  in  other  times,  have 
had  a  kindred  sense  of  desecration;  but  they 
have  realized  that  society,  from  its  point  of 
view,  had  a  right  to  demand  of  them  this 
public  acknowledgment.  They  have  realized, 
too,  that  no  public  act  of  this  kind  could 
really  touch  or  affect  their  private  sense  of 
their  private  sacrament. 

These   modern    folk    are    neither   unselfish 

[237] 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


enough  to  make  their  little  salute  to  organ 
ized  society  cheerfully,  nor  strong  enough  to 
realize  that  the  merely  conventional  tribute 
cannot  hurt  their  private  sanctities.  There  is 
no  such  unselfishness  or  strength  possible  to 
a  person  like  Dick  Lynneker.  If  we  must  face 
free  love,  we  must  face  it,  I  suppose.  But 
nothing  in  heaven  or  earth  need  make  us  face 
a  compromise  like  Dick's.  Defy  all  ritual  and 
symbolism  if  you  must.  But,  for  sheer  topsy- 
turviness,  commend  me  to  his  notion  of  insist 
ing  on  the  consummation's  preceding,  instead 
of  following,  the  ceremony!  There  is  quite  as 
much  superstition  in  one  order  of  things  as  in 
the  other.  Dick  Lynneker  is  bound,  quite  as 
much  as  his  family,  by  prejudices.  After  all, 
the  black  mass  is  only  the  real  mass  reversed. 
I  have  dwelt  on  this  instance  because  it 
seems  to  me  typical,  in  its  way,  of  the  work 
of  the  whole  group  of  English  novelists.  Ex 
cept  for  Mr.  Arnold  Bennett,  who  seems  to  be 
satisfied  with  the  mean  and  low-minded  people 
of  whom  he  feels  that  the  world  consists,  they 
are  all  protesting.  But  they  have  nothing  to 
suggest.  When  their  own  fitful  attempts  to  set 
things  straight  result  in  failure  or  disaster, 
they  blame  the  status  quo.  It  never  occurs  to 
them  to  blame  their  own  way  of  going  about 
the  business  of  changing  things.  A  little  study 
of  history  or  even  of  sociology  would  teach 
them  what  not  to  waste  their  time  on.  But 

[238] 


BRITISH  NOVELISTS,  LTD. 


their  only  use  for  the  past  is  to  "curse  it  out." 
uLes  grands-peres  ont  toujours  tort."  Yet  they 
themselves    go    down    like    ninepins,   knocked 
over  by  the  same  forces  that,  for  a  few  thou 
sand  years  at  least,   have  been  antagonizing 
the  idealism  and  altruism  of  men.  As  I  said 
before,    one    has    some    sympathy   with    Mr. 
Wells;  for  his  people  (his  men,  at  least,  since 
he  does  not  think  much  better  of  women  than 
does  Arnold   Bennett)    are   trying  to   inform 
themselves,  trying  to  think  it  all  out  in  terms 
of  reason.  The  syndicate  is  not  trying  to  think 
anything  out.  It  rests  content  with  replying  to 
every  affirmation  of  history:  "You  lie."  That 
is  not  argument :  it  is  the  mere  sticking  out  of 
tongues.    The    conventionally    accepted    thing 
must  be  wrong;  and  that  is  all  there  is  to  it. 
Take  the  matter  of  their  whole  attitude  to 
sex — which  is,  by  and  large,  the  question  they 
are  most  preoccupied  with.  A  certain  person, 
a  scholar  and  a  gentleman,  was  pointing  out 
to  me,  the  other  day,  the  accuracy  of  Chau 
cer's  treatment  of  Troilus.  Troilus  lets  Cres- 
sida   go,   not  because   he   does  not  love   her 
passionately,  but  because  the  chivalrous  code 
demands  it  of  him,   demands  that  he  should 
protect  her  reputation.   Pandar   cannot  move 
him  from  his  knightly  duty.   If  ever  a  hero 
loved    exuberantly,    it   was   Troilus.    Yet   the 
inhibition  works.  Chaucer  knew  what  he  was 
talking   about.   Whereas,    as   my   interlocutor 

[239] 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


went  on  to  say,  with  these  contemporary  au 
thors,  the  lack  of  inhibition  seems  to  be  the 
index  of  emotion.  They  ask  you  to  take  law 
lessness  for  depth  of  feeling.  The  decorously 
behaved,  according  to  them,  are  only  the  pas 
sionless.  That  is  plain  bad  psychology.  For  if 
love  is  the  real  thing,  it  takes  perpetually  into 
account  the  duty  to  the  beloved.  Love  will 
bring  out  the  scruples  of  a  comparatively  un 
scrupulous  person.  No  real  lover  wants  to  put 
the  beloved  "up  against"  anything  disagree 
able.  And  this  being  brave  for  someone  else 
is  not  a  natural  expression  of  love.  You  may 
be  brave  to  the  rack  and  the  gridiron  for 
yourself;  but  being  vicariously  brave  to  the 
rack  and  the  gridiron  is  a  mean,  modern  kind 
of  courage.  Suppose  you  do  not  believe  in  the 
social  order:  the  social  order,  none  the  less, 
is  powerful  enough  to  make  a  decent  man  want 
its  approval  for  the  woman  he  loves.  He  does 
not  wish  to  have  her  inconvenienced — not  if  he 
loves  her. 

But  the  woman  who  does  not  wish  to  run 
up  against  the  social  order  gets  scant  sym 
pathy  from  the  modern  British  hero.  She 
ought  to  want  to  run  counter  to  it;  and  if 
he  has  anything  to  say  about  it,  she  will  jolly 
well  have  to.  I  do  not  know  how  other  people 
feel  about  Betty  Gale,  but  I  am  exceedingly 
sorry  for  her.  I  am  sufficiently  sorry  for  the 
girl  who  married  Mr.  Onions's  murderer,  the 

[240] 


BRITISH  NOVELISTS,  LTD. 


hero  of  The  Debit  Account  and  In  Accordance 
with  the  Evidence.  I  am  even  sorry  for  Pauline 
in  Flashers  Mead;  though,  frankly,  I  think  Mr. 
Mackenzie  is  fairer  to  his  characters  than  any 
of  the  others.  These  young  women  (I  am 
speaking,  you  see,  at  the  moment,  of  the  re 
spectable  ones)  have  such  selfish,  cantankerous, 
and  muddle-headed  gentlemen  to  deal  with ! 

Our  authors  do  succeed  in  making  their 
conventional  folk  disagreeable.  That  is,  they 
make  the  hero  acutely  perceptive  of  the  con 
ventional  vices.  But  if  ever  there  was  a  case 
of  the  beam  and  the  mote!  Look  at  a  fair 
list  of  them:  the  hero  of  The  Invisible  Event, 
of  The  Strangers'  Wedding,  of  Round  the 
Corner,  of  Flashers  Mead,  of  The  Debit 
Account.  Was  there  ever  a  more  vaporing 
bunch  of  egotists  anywhere?  A  great  deal 
of  fun  has  been  poked  at  the  heroes  of 
the  romantic  period :  the  Manfreds  and  Laras, 
the  Heathcliffs  and  Rochesters.  Their  revolts 
against  society  have  been  jests  for  the  critics 
to  split  their  sides  over,  these  fifty  years.  But 
they  were  dignified  creatures  in  comparison, 
and  they  had  far  more  sense  of  fact.  They 
knew,  for  example,  when  they  bucked  society, 
what  they  were  bucking.  They  knew  the  pro 
cess  was  not  going  to  be  entirely  comfortable, 
and  they  did  not  complain  of  discomfort,  be 
cause  they  saw  a  reason  why  it  should  be 
made  hot  for  them.  They  simply  felt  that  they 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


had  a  quid  pro  quo.  They  had,  as  I  have  said 
elsewhere,  the  Satanic  charm;  they  had  also 
some  of  the  Satanic  logic.  These  heroes  have 
been,  for  many  decades,  considered  the  wild 
est  travesties  of  humanity.  But,  indeed,  they 
are  far  more  comprehensible  than  the  young 
men  in  the  modern  British  novels.  A  young 
woman  in  love  with  Lara  might  well  expect 
the  worst;  but  at  least  she  would  know  what 
to  expect.  Lara  would  never  have  shilly 
shallied  about  among  the  conventions  like 
Dick  Lynneker,  or  Capes,  or  Jacob  Stahl, 
changing  his  mind  from  chapter  to  chapter, 
and  never  knowing  precisely  what  he  did  want, 
anyhow.  Lara  would  have  known  what  he 
wanted  and  why.  He  would  not  even  have 
hesitated  to  attribute  to  himself  an  evil  mo 
tive,  if  he  had  one.  But  none  of  these  young 
men  would  attribute  to  himself  an  evil  motive. 
Whatever  they  want  must  be  right;  and  if 
eventually  they  want  the  exact  opposite,  then 
that  must  be  right,  too.  The  bewildered  wo 
man  follows  in  their  wake. 

That  is  why,  by  and  large,  they  are  so 
corrupting.  Yes,  more  corrupting  than  the 
effervescent  geniuses  of  the  nineties.  You 
might  be  shocked  by  Dorian  Gray,  or  by 
Aubrey  Beardsley's  gentlemen  and  ladies;  but 
you  were  never  tricked  into  imagining  that  it 
was  "up  to  you"  to  look  like  an  Aubrey 
Beardsley  drawing  or  to  behave  like  Dorian 

[242] 


BRITISH  NOVELISTS,  LTD. 


Gray.  The  shining  lights  of  the  nineties  lived 
to  epater  le  bourgeois — and  they  did  it.  On 
the  whole,  that  was  greatly  to  the  credit  of 
le  bourgeois.  People  who  would  rather  die 
than  show  themselves  epates  (there  are  always 
a  lot  of  such  folk)  were  very  entertained.  I 
dare  say  some  of  these  authors  and  poets  did 
harm  in  their  day.  But  they  did  not  do  it  by 
deluding  the  public  into  thinking  that  they 
were  virtuous:  they  did  it  by  being  witty  at 
the  expense  of  virtue.  Our  novelists  are  not 
witty  at  the  expense  of  virtue  (or  at  the  expense 
of  anything  else,  be  it  said  in  passing).  They 
perform  all  their  antics  in  the  very  name  of 
virtue.  They  are  right,  and  everyone  else  is 
wrong. 

Now  the  revolte  with  a  programme  we  can 
endure,  for  we  have  often,  during  the  mud 
dled  history  of  civilization,  had  to  endure  him. 
Sometimes  he  does  a  lot  of  damage;  some 
times  he  does  a  lot  of  good.  The  point  is  that, 
in  either  case,  his  emotional  force  has  been  at 
the  service  of  his  programme.  The  trouble 
with  these  people  is  that  they  have  no  pro 
gramme.  They  are  revoltes  because  they  are 
dissatisfied  or  in  hard  luck,  and  they  hit 
wildly.  They  have  not  the  brains  to  think 
anything  out.  Our  friends  of  the  nineties 
thought  that  nothing  was  sacred — except,  per 
haps,  beauty.  These  folk  know  nothing  about 
beauty — even  Mr.  Galsworthy,  who  may  set 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


you  down  on  a  hillside  to  look  at  a  lovely 
landscape,  and  leave  you  there  for  several 
pages,  but  who  spends  his  time  during  those 
pages  in  infecting  that  natural  loveliness  with 
notions  of  agrarian  reform.  The  only  thing 
that  is  sacred  to  these  young  folk  is  their 
own  impulses;  which  makes  them  about  as 
satisfactory  to  deal  with  as  the  wild  gun  in 
Quatre-Vingt-Treize.  Since  their  own  impulses 
chop  and  change — and  are  always  sacred — 
you  can  do  nothing  except  express  perfect  con 
fidence  in  their  temperaments.  You  are  not  to 
know  them  by  their  fruits;  you  are  to  judge 
them  by  their  good  intentions — for  which  you 
must  take  their  own  word. 

Nor  are  they  "ineffectual  angels."  If  they 
only  were!  They  are  guilty  of  a  lot  of  very 
ignoble  impulses,  and  proceed  often  to  gratify 
them.  So  did  the  romantic  hero-villains,  you 
may  say.  Ah,  but  here  is  the  difference.  The 
romantic  hero-villains  were  proud,  sometimes, 
of  their  sin;  but  they  called  it  sin,  even  while 
they  boasted  of  it.  So  did  the  aesthetes  of  the 
nineties.  If  it  had  not  been  sin,  there  would 
have  been  no  fun  in  it.  A  very  lamentable 
point  of  view,  doubtless;  but  less  dangerous  to 
society  than  the  contemporary  mode.  For 
while  you  still  call  it  sin,  you  are  accepting  the 
categories,  if  not  the  judgments,  of  society. 
You  will  not  hurt  society  much  while  you 
accept  its  categories.  What  these  young  men 

[244] 


BRITISH  NOVELISTS,  LTD. 


and  young  women  do  is  to  call  anything  vir 
tuous  that  they  happen  to  want  to  do.  They 
have  not  even  the  logic  of  Satanists,  perceiv 
ing  evil  and  preferring  it.  The  thing  that  is 
evil  is  the  thing  that  makes  them  suffer;  the 
thing  that  is  good  is  the  thing  that  pleases 
them.  When  free  love  is  convenient,  free  love, 
only,  is  virtuous;  marriage  becomes  virtuous 
the  moment  marriage  becomes  convenient.  As 
you  never  know  when  obstacles  are  going  to 
appear  or  disappear — as  convenience  is  often 
in  the  hands  of  mere  fortuitous  fate — there 
is  no  test  left.  You  must,  I  repeat,  have  blind 
faith  in  their  temperaments.  I  do  not  think 
this  is  too  hard  a  saying. 

As  for  the  women  who  match  and  mate 
with  the  men:  they  do  not  give  us  much 
more  hope.  They  are,  to  speak  plainly,  an 
unlovely  lot.  You  may  be  as  sorry  as  you 
like  for  them,  but  pity  is  not  praise.  Mr. 
Wells's  women  are  too  apt  to  be  selfish  and 
treacherous;  Mr.  Bennett's  opinion  is  evi 
dently  that  no  woman  can  be  decent  unless 
she  is  a  fool — like  Constance,  say,  in  The 
Old  Wives'  Tale.  (I  know  there  is  Alice 
Challis;  but  I  fancy  Alice  is  only  a  symbol  of 
what  every  man  wants  and  never  gets.)  And 
look,  for  a  moment,  at  the  women  described 
by  the  syndicate.  They  are  cheap:  hard  with 
out  being  strong;  cold  without  being  pure; 
sentimental  without  being  kind.  There  is  the 

[245] 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


sensual  type — Madeline  Paignton,  the  aristo 
cratic  wanton,  or  Lily  Haden,  who  cannot  be 
continent  for  a  few  weeks,  even  for  the  sake 
of  wealth  and  a  husband;  there  is  all  the  crew 
of  light  women  among  whom  the  heroes  make 
their  humanitarian  progress.  There  is  the 
intellectual  (God  save  the  mark!)  type:  the 
heroine  of  Gray  Youth,  or  even  Rachel  Bea- 
minster,  whose  mental  energy  all  goes  into 
revolt.  If  Mr.  Walpole  had  made  the  Duchess 
of  Wrexe  a  human  being,  in  whose  reality  we 
could  believe,  we  might  have  more  sympathy 
with  Rachel's  spiteful  traffickings  with  the 
family  ne'er-do-well.  But  we  should  have  to  be 
far  sunk  in  fetishism  to  believe  in  the  Duchr 
ess;  she  is  a  mere  Mumbo-Jumbo;  and  her 
family  seems  about  as  intelligent  as  the  first 
circles  of  Dahomey.  Compare  her,  for  an 
instant,  with  Lady  Kew.  No,  a  tyranny  like 
that  is  an  invented  tyranny;  it  has  nothing  to 
do  with  life.  The  Duchess  of  Wrexe  (to  bor 
row  a  term  from  the  anthropologists)  has  no 
mana  at  all.  Rachel's  revolt  is  absurd;  and 
simply  shows  up  Rachel  as  a  very  disagree 
able  and  headstrong  person.  True,  there  is 
always  something  to  make  their  revolts  ab 
surd.  They  seem  not  to  be  dealing  with  facts 
at  all,  these  young  people;  probably  because 
they  are  all  sentimentalists,  and  for  a  senti 
mentalist  a  delusion  is  as  good  as  a  fact,  any 
day.  A  wicked  giant  is,  by  definition,  anything 

[246] 


BRITISH  NOFELISTS,  LTD. 


you  happen  to  be  tilting  at — even  if  in  real 
life  he  is  a  windmill. 

You  may  say  that  two  facts  these  charac 
ters  do  often  deal  with:  poverty  and  the*  sex 
instinct.  Yes,  they  are  sometimes  poor,  and 
have  a  hard  time.  But  they  have  just  as  hard 
a  time  when  they  are  not  poor.  Poverty  is  not 
the  root  of  all  evil,  logically  exposed  as  such, 
as  it  so  often  is  in  the  work  of  George  Giss- 
ing.  Not  one  of  this  group  of  authors  has 
ever  achieved  the  cumulative,  inevitable  trag 
edy  of  New,  Grub  Street,  for  example:  a 
far  better  indictment  of  some  of  the  ills  of 
the  social  order  than  all  this  modern  mouth 
ing.  Indeed,  not  one  of  them  is  able  to  make 
anything  seem  inevitable.  If  they  would  only 
let  the  indictment  be  pitiless  and  let  it  stand; 
let  us  draw  our  own  conclusions !  And  as  for 
poverty,  have  you  noticed  that  even  when 
these  young  men  are  as  poor  as  the  hero  of 
Mr.  Onions's  trilogy,  they  get  over  it?  They 
never  end  in  poverty.  Yet  their  grievances  are 
not  disposed  of  when  they  become  rich.  By 
that  time,  they  are  worried  about  something 
else.  They  have  the  complaining  habit.  Rich 
or  poor,  married  or  unmarried,  they  are  al 
ways,  one  foresees,  going  to  complain.  These 
authors  convince  one  that  their  Utopia  would 
be  a  hell  on  earth.  They  cannot  reason;  they 
cannot  even  dream  convincingly.  They  are  in 
a  state  of  pitiful  intellectual  poverty — or,  at 

[247] 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


least,  penuriousness;  for,  if  they  have  wealth, 
they  certainly  do  not  distribute  it. 

The  sex  instinct  is,  on  the  whole,  their  long 
suit.  I  do  not  think  there  is  much  more  to  be 
said  about  their  treatment  of  it.  They  have 
not  painted  for  us  a  nobler,  or  a  more  roman 
tic,  or  a  more  passionate  love  between  man 
and  woman,  than  have  some  of  their  predeces 
sors.  I  cannot  see  that  these  novelists  give  us 
anything  new  in  the  way  of  human  information 
— except,  perhaps,  just  one  thing. 

That  one  thing  can  best  be  described  as  a 
new  theory — no,  not  a  theory,  a  kind  of 
Futurist  presentment — of  human  types.  There 
are  just  two  possible  things  to  do  with  the 
heroes  and  heroines  of  the  new  school;  either 
to  say  that,  as  human  beings,  they  do  not 
exist;  or  to  assume  that  they  do  exist  and  to 
lament  the  fact.  The  kinder,  I  believe,  is  to 
say  that  they  do  not  exist.  It  is  also  the 
easier  conclusion.  For  they  are  not  consistent 
with  themselves;  they  pass  kaleidoscopically 
from  one  state  of  being  to  its  opposite;  as 
mortals,  they  are  incalculable,  and  as  literary 
creations  they  are  unconvincing.  "I  don't  be 
lieve  there's  any  sich  a  person,"  is  the  natural 
reply  to  their  presented  cases.  The  authors 
have  not  the  power  of  assuring  us  of  the  real 
existence  of  their  characters.  Life  is  not  in 
them.  If  it  is  not  a  fault  of  vision,  then  it  is 
a  fault  of  technique.  I  have  spoken  of  the 

[248] 


BRITISH  NOVELISTS,  LTD. 


complete  unreality  of  the  Duchess  of  Wrexe; 
but  she  is  no  more  unreal  than  Dick  Lynn- 
eker,  or  the  hero  of  Mr.  Onions's  trilogy. 
You  can  believe  in  far  viler  and  wickeder 
people,  if  you  must;  you  can  believe  in  Moll 
Flanders  or  Carker  or  Long  John  Silver. 
It  is  not  moral  but  intellectual  squeamish- 
ness  that  makes  it  difficult  to  accept  them. 
Psychologically  speaking,  they  are  freaks  in 
side-shows.  Mr.  Bennett  presents  us  with  a 
whole  gallery  of  ignoble  folk;  but  one  is  in 
clined  to  believe  in  some  of  them,  at  least. 
Indeed,  one  is  inclined  to  believe,  thanks  to 
Mr.  Bennett,  that  the  Five  Towns  are  almost 
entirely  populated  with  such  (which  may  be 
hard  on  the  Five  Towns,  but  that  is  Mr.  Ben 
nett's  look-out).  The  syndicate  has  not  Mr. 
Bennett's  technique. 

Yet  this  is  just  where  the  very  fact  of  the 
syndicate  gives  one  pause.  Since  there  are  so 
many  novelists  in  England  doing  precisely  the 
same  kind  of  inconsistent,  unconvincing,  un 
lovable  person,  there  may  well  be  some  gen 
uine  type  that  they  are  trying  to  describe. 
Almost  never,  it  seems  to  me,  do  they  "get  it 
across";  but  there  must  be  people  wandering 
about  the  English  landscape  who  have  given 
the  syndicate  the  idea.  We  hardly  believe  that 
their  portraits  are  accurate;  for  their  por 
traits  are  not  psychologically  possible.  But 
one  comes  to  believe  in  prototypes.  The  syndic 

[249] 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


cate  would  not  all,  at  a  given  signal,  have 
gone  off  their  heads  in  exactly  the  same  way. 
They  must  have  some  warrant  in  fact.  If  the 
prototypes  of  Jacob  Stahl  and  of  Dick  Lynn- 
eker,  of  Rachel  Beaminster  and  of  the  hero 
ine  of  Gray  Youth  exist,  these  books  are, 
in  a  sense,  a  portent.  The  Five  Towns  might 
be  responsible  for  Hilda  Lessways,  but  the 
Five  Towns  are  not  responsible  for  the  girl 
in  Gray  Youth.  One  does  not  feel  that  the 
syndicate  gives  one  more  than  circumstantial 
evidence,  but  of  that,  there  is  an  almost  over 
whelming  amount.  This  is  depressing.  Per 
haps,  eventually,  Mr.  Compton  Mackenzie 
will  resign  from  the  syndicate  and  really  tell 
us  something.  At  present  he  too  is  bound  by 
their  conventions.  But  in  Flashers  Mead,  tire 
some  as  it  is  with  the  reiterant  egotism  of 
half-fledged  youth,  he  does  "get  it  across." 
Certain  people  whose  opinion  is  worth  much 
more  than  mine,  tell  me  that  Mr.  Walpole 
has  got  it  across  in  The  Dark  Forest.  I 
must  admit,  in  my  own  case,  the  strict  limita 
tions  of  western  Europe:  it  will  take  more 
than  Mr.  Walpole  to  make  Russians  credible 
to  me.  He  seems  to  me  no  more  plausible  than 
Dostoievsky,  and  far,  far  short  of  Turgenev. 
And,  after  all,  I  am  not  sure  that  Nijinsky 
is  not  a  better  expositor  than  either. 

It    has    been    much    more    difficult    than    I 
dreamed,  to  deal  with  these  gentlemen  at  all. 

[250] 


BRITISH  NOVELISTS,  LTD. 


The  work  of  one  shifts  and  plays  into  the 
work  of  the  other  so  maddeningly  that  it  is 
hard,  not  only  to  treat  of  them  individually, 
but  to  treat  of  them  even  as  a  group.  You 
think  you  have  a  line  on  Mr.  Walpole,  and 
you  find  him  melting  into  Mr.  Beresford  or 
Mr.  Onions.  Everyone  knows  what  a  miser 
able  business  a  composite  photograph  is.  No 
feature  is  really  defined.  These  authors  dif 
ferentiate  themselves  just  enough  by  detail  of 
plot  and  setting  and  diction,  to  avoid  a  grand 
inclusive  charge  of  plagiarism.  You  cannot 
say  that  one  has  filched  a  page  from  another, 
because  there  is  no  telling  who  began  it.  But 
I  believe  that,  as  far  as  style  is  concerned,  if 
you  inserted  six  consecutive  pages  written  sev 
erally  by  the  six  of  them,  in  any  chapter  of 
any  book,  no  one  would  ever  know  the  differ 
ence.  Of  course,  you  would  have  to  allow  for 
different  names  of  characters,  and  some  havoc 
might  be  played  with  continuity  of  plot — if 
there  happened  to  be  any  plot  in  that  chapter. 
But  the  style  would,  I  am  sure,  stand  the  test. 
Mr.  Mackenzie  forces  his  vocabulary  as  the 
others  do  not  (he  prides  himself,  I  fancy, 
particularly  on  the  number  of  his  metaphors 
for  the  moon) ;  but  apart  from  Mr.  Mac 
kenzie's  occasional  exoticism,  they  write  alike. 
They  have  the  same  rhythms,  the  same  sen 
tence-structure,  the  same  syntactical  habits.  It 
is  clever,  nervous  writing,  but  it  is  not  the 

[251] 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


grand  style.  They  are  not  memorable:  they 
do  not  stand  out,  any  one  of  them,  or  any  one 
of  their  works,  as  a  mental  experience.  The 
only  adventure  to  be  got  from  them  is  to  read 
them  all,  and  then,  forgetting  (as  you  inevit 
ably  do)  who  is  who  and  which  is  which, 
analyze  the  effect  of  the  group.  It  is  a  hazy 
and  perplexing  effect — as  I  fear  I  have  too 
meticulously  said. 

For  in  the  long  run,  one's  main  feeling 
about  the  younger  English  writers  is  one  of 
sheer  disappointment.  They  have  their  repu 
tation:  people  are  always  telling  you  that  this 
one  or  that  one  is  really  important.  I  cannot 
believe  that  they  are.  As  portrayers  of  life, 
they  do  not  convince — a  matter  partly  of 
muddle-headedness  and  partly  of  technique  in 
the  narrower  sense.  Moreover,  they  are  dull. 
Mr.  Bennett  may  not  convince  in  the  end, 
because  in  the  end  one  becomes  aware  of  his 
moral  myopia;  but  he  is  not  usually  dull.  He 
writes  better  than  they  do — that  is  what  it 
comes  to.  If  there  were  only  one  of  them,  we 
might  put  up  with  him;  but  how  can  we  put 
up  with  six  of  him?  There  is  not  time.  As  for 
their  attack  on  convention,  whatever  it  may 
be,  they  will  have  to  do  it  better  to  get  any 
serious  attention  paid  to  them.  You  need  sea 
soned  troops  to  attack  that  fortress — or  at 
least  bigger  guns.  The  only  person  who  thinks 
that  anything,  no  matter  what,  is  better  than 


BRITISH  NOVELISTS,  LTD. 


the  status  quo,  is  the  anarchist.  Most  of  us 
are  not  anarchists;  and  while  most  of  us  are 
willing  to  have  things  improved,  if  necessary, 
at  our  own  expense,  we  want  some  assurance 
that  they  will  be  improved.  And  if  we  must 
make  blind  experiments — as  the  reformers  all 
want  us  to — let  us  at  least  know  the  object  of 
the  experiment.  These  writers  do  not  seem  to 
know  what  they  would  like  to  achieve  if  they 
could. 

What  they  chiefly  breed  in  one  is  hopeless 
ness.  If  this  is  the  best  that  England  can  do 
for  us  in  the  way  of  fiction,  we  must  either 
encourage  our  native  product,  or  eschew  fic 
tion  and  take  to  "serious"  reading.  These  men 
are  too  dull.  The  time  is  ripe,  once  more,  I 
believe,  for  a  few  big  picaresque  novels :  some 
thing  in  the  mode  of  the  Satyricon,  and  Gil 
Bias,  and  Huckleberry  Finn.  For  I  do  not 
think  that  people  will  put  up  forever  with 
being  bored — especially  as  they  are  not  boring 
us  in  the  interests  of  virtue. 

To  be  sure — though  it  is  some  time  since  I 
began  this  essay — I  have  still  not  read  D.  H. 
Lawrence. 


253] 


THE    REMARKABLE    RIGHTNESS 
OF    RUDYARD    KIPLING 

F  looks  Chestertonian  as  I  write  it.  As  if  a 
vorld  of  concrete  things  were  to  be  gath 
ered  into  the  titular  abstraction;  or  as  if 
Kipling's  rightness  were  presently  to  be  proved 
remarkable  in  that  it  is  all  wrong. 

And  yet,  I  think,  Chesterton  or  no  Ches 
terton — where  is  he,  by  the  way? — I  mean 
precisely  what  I  have  set  down :  Rudyard  Kip 
ling's  remarkable  Tightness.  Right,  because 
time  has  sustained  him  against  scoffers;  re 
markable,  because  no  one  originally  expected 
that  particular  kind  of  Tightness  from  him. 

This  is  not  to  be  a  discursive  or  an  exhaust 
ive  discussion  of  Kipling's  utterances  on  plan 
etary  or  even  racial  questions.  I  have  not 
annotated  his  complete  works  with  his  "right- 
ness"  in  mind.  Indeed,  to  treat  him  exhaust 
ively  would  be  a  very  difficult  task;  for  the 
sum  of  his  wisdom  is  made  up,  not  of  a  few 
big  "works,"  but  of  an  infinite  number  of 
significant  brevities.  My  only  excuse  for  deal 
ing  with  him  at  all  is  that  I  have  lived  a  long 
time  with  the  prose  and  verse  of  Kipling,  and 
that  my  knowledge  of  him  has  reached  what 
Henry  James  called  the  point  of  saturation.  I 

[254] 


REMARKABLE  RIGHTNESS  OF  KIPLING 

will  not  pretend  that  I  have  read  every  word 
he  has  ever  printed  in  the  Allahabad  Pioneer 
or  even  in  the  London  Times;  but  I  know  him 
very  well.  I  belong  to  the  generation  that  took 
its  Kipling  hard.  My  friends  who  are  five 
years  older  or  five  years  younger  never  took 
him  quite  so  hard  as  that.  They  knew  other 
gods. 

Rudyard  Kipling,  in  his  later  life,  has  suf 
fered  under  two  great  disadvantages:  his  in 
sistence  on  a  political  point  of  view  which  was 
unpopular,  and  the  gradual  diminishing  of  his 
flow  of  masterpieces.  The  dullest  people  will 
tell  you  smartly  that  he  is  "written  out";  the 
cleverest  will  tell  you  that  he  was  precocious, 
but  always  cheap,  if  not  vulgar.  Perhaps  some 
one  will  fling  "The  Female  of  the  Species"  at 
you.  This  paper  is  not  to  be  a  catalogue  of 
Kipling's  virtues,  nor  yet  of  his  achievements. 
But  I  should  like  you  to  consider  with  me  for 
a  few  moments  that  little  volume  of  verse, 
The  Five  Nations.  I  take  The  Five  Nations 
purposely,  for  it  is  the  Kipling  of  The  Five 
Nations  that  I  mean.  Not  the  better  known 
Kipling  of  the  Barrack-Room  Ballads  or  The 
Seven  Seas.  But  supremely  the  Kipling  I  refer 
to. 

Two  things  changed  the  Kipling  we  first 
knew:  renewed  residence  in  England,  and  the 
Boer  War.  Of  course,  he  was  always  an  im 
perialist;  he  always  loved  Lord  Roberts — as 

[255] 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


long  ago  as  the  Plain  Tales,  when  Kipling 
was  at  once  younger  and  cleverer  than  anyone 
else.  But  he  saw  these  things,  then,  from  the 
angle  of  India;  he  was  an  imperialist  only  in 
embryo.  He  cared  more  for  the  British  army 
— in  red — than  for  the  British  navy;  and 
Anzacs  were  not  within  his  vision. 

Then — by  devious  paths — he  returned  to 
England;  and  England  held  him  as  it  held  the 
man  and  the  woman  in  "An  Habitation  En 
forced."  The  Boer  War  came;  and  The  Five 
Nations  tells  how  he  reacted.  He  has  gone 
on  very  consistently  from  that  day,  developing, 
but  never  swerving  from  the  path  of  his  con 
viction.  England  did  not  listen  to  him:  the 
Liberals  of  the  first  decade  of  the  twentieth 
century  did  not  propose  to  listen  to  anyone 
who  wrote  short  stories  for  the  sake  of  the 
plot,  and  verse  for  the  sake  of  a  Tory  idea. 
They  were  much  too  serious  in  Great  Britain, 
in  those  days,  to  hearken  to  Rudyard  Kipling. 
And,  so  far  as  I  know,  neither  Lord  Roberts 
nor  Kipling  ever  said,  "I  told  you  so." 

Yet  listen  to  "The  Lesson" : 

It  was  our  fault,  and  our  very  great  fault — and  now  we 

must  turn  it  to  use; 
We   have  forty   million   reasons  for    failure,   but  not  a 

single  excuse ! 

How  one  has  heard  that  rough-and-ready 
poem  reviled — in  the  early  nineteen-hundreds ! 
Even  now  one  recalls  abusive  editorials  in 


REMARKABLE  RICH  TN ESS  OF  KIPLING 

American  newspapers  about  the  poem  which 
mentioned 

.  .  .  the  flannelled  fools  at  the  wicket  .  .  .  the  muddied 
oafs  at  the  goals. 

"Oblige  me  by  referring  to  the  files."  I 
remember  those  taunting  comments  very  well. 
Not  an  editor  but  was  so  sane  that  he  could 
make  his  little  mock  of  Kipling  as  an  extrem 
ist.  But  if  you  will  get  out  The  Five  Nations 
and  read  "The  Islanders"  through  soberly, 
you  will  curse  those  editors  for  fools.  "Pre 
paredness"  is  so  familiar  to  us  all  now,  not 
only  as  a  word  but  even  as  an  idea,  that  we 
can  hardly  believe  intelligent  people  were  call 
ing  a  man  names  fifteen  years  ago  for  stating 
axioms.  We  are  always  thinking  the  days 
of  Galileo  are  over.  But  they  are  not;  they 
never  will  be;  the  human  race  instinctively  and 
always  has  it  in  for  Galileo.  Kipling  could 
get  an  audience  for  tales  and  ballads  and 
jungle-books ;  but  the  moment  he  tried  to  speak 
nationally,  he  could  not  get  an  audience.  Even 
now,  they  would  rather  read  H.  G.  Wells. 

Do  ye  wait  for  the  spattered  shrapnel  ere  ye  learn  how 

a  gun  is  laid  ? 
For  the  low  red  glare  to  southward  when   the   raided 

coast  towns  burn  ? 
(Light  ye  shall  have  on  that  lesson,  but  little  time  to 

learn.)" 

"Yes,  thanks,"  came  the  sarcastic  answer 
from  all  the  wise  British  millions;  "we  jolly 

[257] 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


well  do  wait."  And  they  "jolly  well"  did;  and 
a  dozen  years  later  it  all  came  true,  and  their 
sarcasm  was  put  where  it  belonged.  That  is,  if 
they  had  the  sense  to  see  it. 

Will  ye  pray  them  or  preach  them,  or  print  them,  or 

ballot  them  back  from  your  shore  ? 
Will  your  workmen  issue  a  mandate  to  bid  them  strike 

no  more  ? 

Well:  it  very  nearly  came  to  that.  But  I  sug 
gest  that  you  re-read  "The  Islanders."  I  can 
not  quote  any  more.  Every  word  of  "The 
Islanders"  is  true  to  make  one  weep;  and  it 
was  the  storm-centre  of  The  Five  Nations. 
How  many  thousands  of  people  felt  that,  in 
writing  "The  Islanders,"  Kipling  had  destroyed 
his  own  reputation!  Doubtless  the  Germans 
would  have  felt  the  same  way  about  "The 
Parting  of  the  Columns";  though,  if  they  had 
read  it  and  had  taken  the  trouble  to  believe  it, 
it  would  have  saved  them  a  good  many  mil 
lions  spent  in  propaganda.  But  the  Germans 
were  quite  as  stupid  as  the  British  public. 

There  has  been  more  than  one  reason,  as  I 
have  said,  for  the  waning  of  Kipling's  popu 
larity.  In  the  first  place,  he  does  not  give  us  so 
many  good  stories  as  once,  in  the  full  flush  of 
his  genius,  he  did.  That  is  a  perfectly  legiti 
mate  reason.  Then,  too,  he  has  had  an  un 
lucky  trick  of  seeing  ahead.  When  "The  Edge 
of  the  Evening"  was  first  published  (in  1913), 
[258] 


REMARKABLE  RIGHTNESS  OF  KIPLING 

it  passed  for  hysteria.  Only  "fools'*  believed 
in  German  spies — in  1913.  But  there  are  other 
causes  more  insidious  and  more  potent.  He 
stands,  not  only  politically  for  the  highest  type 
of  Toryism — at  least,  one  fancies  he  does — 
but  for  a  lot  of  other  outdated  things:  pious 
attachment  to  the  soil;  romantic  love,  endur 
ing,  clean  outside  and  in;  the  beauty  of  child 
hood  and  the  bitterer  beauty  of  parenthood; 
patriotism  unshrinking  and  unashamed;  loath 
ing  of  the  mob  and  the  mob's  madness  and 
meanness;  the  continuity  of  the  English  pol 
itical  tradition,  from  Magna  Charta  down; 
religious  toleration;  scrupulous  perception  of 
differences  between  race  and  race,  type  and 
type;  the  White  Man's  Burden.  And  I  doubt 
if,  even  now,  he  is  an  ardent  believer  in 
Woman  Suffrage. 

Almost  any  one  of  these  attitudes  would 
have  been  enough  to  damn  him  with  the  Brit 
ish  democracy.  One  quite  understands  that 
The  Five  Nations  would  not  have  been  Mr. 
Lloyd  George's  vade  mecum.  One  perfectly 
sees  why  Mr.  Asquith,  following  the  usual 
tradition,  passed  Kipling  over  for  the  Lau- 
reateship  in  favor  of  a  gentleman  whom  few 
people  had  heard  of  and  no  one  could  read. 
("The  Widow  at  Windsor"  probably  shocked 
Balliol  as  much  as  it  shocked  Queen  Victoria.) 
No  Kipling-lover,  for  that  matter,  particularly 
wanted  Kipling  to  be  Laureate.  One  even  real- 

[259] 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


izes — though  this  time  with  amusement — why 
he  is  persona  non  grata  to  the  "brittle  intel 
lectuals  who  crack  beneath  a  strain. "  The 
intellectuals  say  that  he  is  good  at  times  for 
children,  and  often  for  the  vulgar,  and  take 
their  refuge  in  not  taking  him  seriously.  The 
intellectuals  have  been  Russianizing  them 
selves,  in  these  last  years;  and  Kipling's 
laughter  at  that  phenomenon  must  have  been 
unholy.  They  could  scarcely  afford  to  feel 
him  remarkably  right,  it  would  prove  them  so 
remarkably  wrong. 

As  I  say,  one  quite  understands  why  the 
gorged  and  flattered  workingman,  the  dema 
gogue,  and  the  "brittle  intellectual"  have  not 
read  him  or  listened  to  him;  but  it  is  none  the 
less  a  mystery  that  some  one  should  not  have 
listened  to  him  and  seen  that  he  was  eminently 
sane  on  many  vital  points.  There  is,  after  all, 
no  one  living  in  England  who  writes  so  well, 
who  is  so  nearly  master  of  the  English  lan 
guage.  But  one  has  to  conclude  that  his  audi 
ence  has  made  up  its  mind  only  to  be  amused 
during  a  train-journey. 

There  was  a  merry  little  international  cor 
respondence  in  1914  or  1915  over  "The  Truce 
of  the  Bear."  What  did  Mr.  Kipling  say  now? 
It  was  all  a  great  joke  on  him.  People  also 
raked  up  "The  Man  Who  Was."  I  believe 
Mr.  Kipling  never  replied  to  his  humorous 
questioners,  or,  if  he  did,  it  was  to  the  effect 
[260! 


REMARKABLE  RIGHT  NESS  OF  KIPLING 

that  a  man,  like  a  government,  might  change 
his  foreign  policy  with  changing  conditions. 
Still,  everybody  was  very  much  amused,  and 
for  some  reason  (it  can  have  been  only  his 
unpopularity)  very  much  pleased.  Perhaps 
they  had  not  forgiven  some  of  the  other  poems 
in  The  Five  Nations,  and  looked  to  dis 
credit  Kipling  by  pitching  on  "The  Truce  of 
the  Bear"  as  they  had  once  pitched  on  "The 
Islanders."  With  Russia  driving  back  the  Teu 
tons  on  the  eastern  front,  I  do  not  see  that 
Kipling,  as  a  patriot,  could  proceed  to  defend 
his  ancient  position  very  loudly.  But  I  do  not 
remember — here  I  speak  under  correction,  for 
his  war-poems  are  very  elusive — that  even 
since  1914  he  has  written  of  Russia  as  he  has 
written  of  France.  And  I  have  often  wondered 
if,  in  the  last  months,  he  has  not  taken  a  very 
private  comfort  in  his  own  refrain  of  years 
ago: 

Make  ye  no  truce  with  Adam-zad,  the  bear  that  walks 
like  a  man. 

He  may  at  least  feel  that  he  was  essentially 
right  about  Russia,  if  incidentally  wrong.  If  I 
am  not  mistaken,  "The  Truce  of  the  Bear" 
was  written  on  the  occasion  of  the  invitation 
to  the  first  Hague  Conference.  We  took  it  that 
it  was  the  Tsar  whom  England  was  to  mis 
trust.  Very  likely.  But  I  cannot  help  believing 
that  Kipling  had  a  private  suspicion  that  the 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


Hague  Conference  was  all  tommy-rot.  Which, 
obviously,  it  was,  pragmatically  judged.  The 
sheer  decency  and  competence  of  certain  Rus 
sian  generals  did  save  the  world  in  the  first 
year  of  the  war:  let  us  never  forget  it.  There 
never  was  a  Russian  steam-roller,  but  the  Ger 
mans  thought  there  was  going  to  be  one.  Let 
us,  as  I  say,  never  forget  it.  But  for  the  last 
year,  the  Russian  people  has  been  behaving 
allegorically  in  the  sense  of  the  poem. 

'When  he  stands  up  like  a  tired  man,  tottering  near  and 

near; 

When  he  stands  up  as  pleading,  in  wavering,  man-brute 
guise.  .  .  . 

When  he  shows  as  seeking  quarter,  with  paws  like  hands 

in  prayer, 
That  is  the  time  of  peril — the  time  of  the  Truce  of  the 

Bear!' 

Eyeless,  noseless,  and  lipless,  asking  a  dole  at  the  door, 
Matun,  the  old  blind  beggar,  he  tells  it  o'er  and  o'er; 
Fumbling  and  feeling  the  rifles,  warming  his  hands  at 

the  flame, 
Hearing  our  careless  white  men  talk  of  the  morrow's 

game; 

Over  and  over  the  story,  ending  as  he  began: — 
'  There  is  no  truce  with  Adam-zad — the  bear  that  looks  like 
a  man  !' 

I  should  be  particularly  sorry  to  say  any 
thing  that  German  propagandists  would  like 
to  have  said.  It  is  perfectly  impossible  for  the 
average  person  to  know  what  is  the  proper 


REMARKABLE  RIGHTNESS  OF  KIPLING 

and  what  the  improper  attitude  to  take  to 
Russia  at  the  moment.  Even  those  in  high 
places  might  be  forgiven  for  being  perplexed. 
What  the  average  person  perceives  is  that  the 
Russians  are  behaving  very  much,  and  very 
vividly,  like  "the  bear  that  looks  like  a  man." 
Certainly  they  stood  up  at  Brest-Litovsk  "in 
wavering,  man-brute  guise." 

The  only  point  of  all  which  is  that  the  folk 
who  made  so  merry,  a  few  years  ago,  over 
"The  Truce  of  the  Bear"  had  better  find 
another  joke.  One  does  not  base  the  Tightness 
of  Kipling  on  his  merely  having  been  a  little 
less  ridiculous,  in  a  given  instance,  than  his 
contemporaries  wanted  to  think  him. 

I  wonder,  too— still  as  I  turn  the  pages  of 
The  Five  Nations — if  there  is  not  a  tonic 
value  today  in  the  poem  called  "Sussex." 

God  gave  all  men  all  earth  to  love, 

But  since  our  hearts  are  small, 
Ordained  for  each  one  spot  should  prove 

Beloved  over  all; 
That,  as  He  watched  Creation's  birth, 

So  we,  in  godlike  mood, 
May  of  our  love  create  our  earth 

And  see  that  it  is  good. 

So  one  shall  Baltic  pines  content, 

As  one  some  Surrey  glade, 
Or  one  the  palm-grove's  droned  lament 

Before  Levuka's  trade. 
Each  to  his  choice,  and  I  rejoice 

The  lot  has  fallen  to  me 
In  a  fair  ground — in  a  fair  ground — 

Yea,  Sussex  by  the  sea ! 

[263] 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


So  to  the  land  our  hearts  we  give 

Till  the  sure  magic  strike, 
And  Memory,  Use,  and  Love  make  live 

Us  and  our  fields  alike — 
That  deeper  than  our  speech  and  thought, 

Beyond  our  reason's  sway, 
Clay  of  the  pit  whence  we  were  wrought 

Yearns  to  its  fellow-clay. 

The  windy  internationalism  to  which  we  are 
so  often  invited,  nowadays,  to  listen,  would 
deny  it — might  even  call  it  "chauvinisme  de 
clocher"  The  reply  is  that  people  actually  do 
feel  as  Kipling  says  they  do.  He  has  always 
tended  to  serve  (in  his  own  phrase)  the  God 
of  Things  as  They  Are.  Granted,  for  the  sake 
of  argument,  that  it  would  be  good  for  you  to 
love  all  men  and  all  countries  alike,  the  fact 
remains  that  you  do  not.  If  that  is  your  duty, 
most  decent  people  do  not  perform  their  duty; 
their  fathers  did  not,  and  their  children  will 
not.  Even  the  most  radical  internationalists 
wish  to  substitute  class-consciousness  for  patri 
otism — on  the  whole,  a  less  enlightened  chau 
vinism  than  the  other.  And,  judging  from  the 
present  war,  they  have  not  been  able  to  pull 
even  that  off. 

As  for  saying  that  one  has  the  same  sense 
of  personal  insult  in  seeing  a  foreign  land 
invaded  as  in  seeing  one's  own,  that  is  non 
sense.  France  has  been  the  home  of  the  spirit 
to  many  of  us;  the  thought  of  an  invaded 
France  is  of  a  bitterness  hardly  to  be  borne. 

[264] 


REMARKABLE  RIGHT  NESS  OF  KIPLING 

But  though  one  has  lived  in  it  and  loved  it, 
one  is  not  so  angry,  in  the  very  depths  of  one, 
at  Teuton  occupation  of  France  as  one  would 
be  at  Teuton  occupation  of  one's  own  soil.  I 
will  not  say  what  German  invasion  of  my  own 
New  England  would  be  to  me.  "Ten  genera 
tions  of  New  England  ancestors"  would  rise 
up  to  curse  the  enemy.  But  even  an  invaded 
Oshkosh  (and  Oshkosh  is  a  mere  name  to  me) 
would  be  to  me,  an  American,  an  even  dead 
lier  insult  than  an  invaded  Paris.  I  should  take 
it  more  personally,  I  know.  And  if  that  can  be 
so  for  us,  in  our  far-flung,  heterogeneous  re 
public,  what  must  be  the  case  with  the  children 
of  homogeneous  France?  If  I  know  that  I 
should  feel  that  way  about  Oshkosh,  what 
must  the  Kentish  man  feel  about  Kent,  the 
Devonshire  man  about  Devon,  the  Englishman 
about  England?  Did  not  all  sane  Americans 
between  Bangor  and  San  Diego  react  in  pre 
cisely  similar  fashion  to  Herr  Zimmermann's 
plans  for  Texas?  I  have  never  even  been  in 
Texas,  but  Texas  belongs  to  me  and  I  belong 
to  it. 

No:  say  what  you  please,  geography  is  the 
great  human  science;  it  is  more  intimate  than 
biology.  And  Kipling  has  had  the  sense  to  see 
it  because  he  really  knows  something  about 
the  genus  homo.  It  was  a  delightful  phrase  of 
the  Frenchman's  that  charmed  our  youth — 
"the  passion  for  the  planet";  but  are  we  not  a 

[265] 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


little  undeceived  now?  Do  we  not  at  last  real 
ize  that  the  only  real  uman  without  a  country" 
is  the  cosmopolite?  If  there  be  such  a  person. 
I  can  almost  hear  someone  quoting  iron 
ically, 

But  there  is  neither  East  nor  West,  border  nor  breed 

nor  birth, 
When  two  strong  men  stand  face  to  face,  though  they 

come  from  the  ends  of  the  earth. 

That  is  very  taking;  and  in  a  sense  it  is  true, 
thank  Heaven.  But  I  fancy  Kipling  would 
want  to  modify  it  now.  At  least  he  would  like 
to  write  a  foot-note  containing  a  careful  defi 
nition  of  the  word  "strong."  It  would  not 
apply  to  the  average  German. 

Kipling  was  called,  for  many  years,  by  the 
pacifist-Liberals,  a  jingo.  All  imperialists  were, 
ex  officio,  jingoes.  Some  of  these  people  have 
got  into  their  heads,  by  this  time,  the  concep 
tion  of  a  "preparedness"  that  makes  for 
peace,  and  realize  the  difference  between  a 
real  jingo  and  a  man  who  wants  to  avert  war 
in  the  only  way  possible  when  a  considerable 
portion  of  the  world  remains  militaristic.  We 
all  know  by  this  time  that,  if  England  had 
been  prepared  in  1914,  there  would  have  been 
no  war  in  1914;  that,  very  probably,  if  Sir 
Edward  Grey  had  been  empowered  to  say,  at 
the  proper  instant,  that  England  would  fight, 
there  would  have  been  no  war  in  1914.  Had 

[266] 


REMARKABLE  RIGHTNESS  OF  KIPLING 

"The  Army  of  a  Dream"  been  there,  the 
mailed  fist  would  not  have  been  shaken  at  the 
world.  But  that  is  ancient  history.  It  is  to  be 
hoped  that  not  every  one  who  preached  pre 
paredness  in  the  old  days  is  now  stigmatized  as 
a  jingo.  If  anyone  still  thinks  of  Kipling 
vaguely  as  a  war-mad  imperialist,  let  him  read 
"The  Settler": 

Earth  where  we  rode  to  slay  or  be  slain, 

Our  love  shall  redeem  unto  life; 
We  will  gather  and  lead  to  her  lips  again 

The  waters  of  ancient  strife, 
From  the  far  and  fiercely  guarded  streams 

And  the  pools  where  we  lay  in  wait, 
Till  the  corn  cover  our  evil  dreams 

And  the  young  corn  our  hate. 

That  is  not  the  accent  of  the  dyed-in-the-wool 
jingo. 

And    here    again — still    out    of    The    Five 
Nations— the  "Half-Ballad  of  Waterval" : 

They'll  never  know  the  shame  that  brands — 

Black  shame  no  livin'  down  makes  white, 
The  mockin'  from  the  sentry-stands, 

The  women's  laugh,  the  gaoler's  spite. 

We  are  too  bloomin'  much  polite, 
But  that  is  *ow  I'd  'ave  us  be  ... 

Since  I  'ave  learned  at  Waterval 

The  meanin'  of  captivity. 

Written  at  least  fifteen  years  ago — and  still,  I 
fancy,  the  core  of  the  matter.  Certainly  very 

[267] 


MODES  AND   MORALS 


different  from  imperialistic-militaristic  concep 
tions  of  the  rights  of  prisoners  as  exemplified 
by — Wittenberg,  let  us  say. 

All  these  later  quotations  go  to  show 
merely  that  Kipling  need  not  have  been  so 
slanged  for  The  Five  Nations,  since  in  much 
of  The  Five  Nations  he  has  pretty  well 
expressed  fundamental  British  feeling — as  is 
now,  day  by  day,  being  proved.  And — let  us 
face  it  squarely — fundamental  British  feeling 
is  on  the  whole  the  most  decent  on  earth.  As 
Americans,  we  like  to  think  that  we  share  it. 
No  one,  to  be  sure,  paid  much  attention  to  the 
poems  just  cited :  they  took  it  out  in  criticizing 
things  like  'The  Lesson,"  "The  Islanders," 
and  "The  Old  Men."  Now  we  find  that  in 
those  much-execrated  poems  he  told  the  simple 
truth.  Why  not  admit  it?  Admit,  that  is, 
ungrudgingly,  not  only  that  he  has  been  right 
since  1914,  but  that  he  was  right  much  earlier, 
and  that  it  is  the  other  people  who  have  had 
to  shift  their  point  of  view. 

But  policies — as  well  foreign  as  domestic — 
have,  from  of  old,  made  bitter  enemies  and 
excited  acrimonious  controversy.  No  one  could 
have  said  anything  worse  about  Kipling  than 
political  folk  in  all  the  serious  English  reviews 
were  saying  (before  the  war),  all  the  time, 
about  their  political  opponents.  You  could 
never  take  up  one  of  those  famous  periodicals 
without  feeling  that  vitriol  had  been  spilled  in 
[268] 


REMARKABLE  RIGHT  NESS  OF  KIPLING 

your  very  presence.  If  there  is  a  special  rhet 
oric  of  vituperation,  the  English  political 
article  was  its  textbook.  We  milder  Americans 
gasped.  No  Southern  gentleman,  on  the  floor 
of  the  Senate,  ever  went  quite  so  far. 

So  we  should  expect  Kipling  to  be  called 
horrid  names  by  those  who  disagreed  with  him 
politically,  because  that  is  English  political 
manners.  No  one  really  minds,  except  as  one 
has  always  resented  the  doom  of  Cassandra. 
What  one  does  mind,  what  one  does  resent, 
is  the  judgment  of  the  "intellectuals"  on  Kip 
ling's  general  human  knowledge.  They  seem  to 
agree  with  Oscar  Wilde  that,  in  turning  over 
the  pages,  "one  feels  as  if  one  were  seated 
under  a  palm-tree  reading  life  by  superb 
flashes  of  vulgarity.  .  .  .  From  the  point  of 
view  of  literature  Mr.  Kipling  is  a  genius  who 
drops  his  aspirates.  .  .  .  He  is  our  first  author 
ity  on  the  second-rate,  and  has  seen  marvellous 
things  through  key-holes,  and  his  backgrounds 
are  real  works  of  art."  Even  Henry  James 
spoke  of  him  tentatively,  as  a  young  man  who 
had  gone  a  long  way  before  breakfast.  Politics 
always  make  people  see  red;  but  the  human 
emotions  in  general,  people  ought  to  be  able 
to  discuss  amicably.  And  the  intellectuals  have 
never  been  willing  to  discuss  Kipling  at  all. 
When  he  is  dead,  they  will,  of  course.  But  at 
present  they  still  consider  him  negligible. 

Now  no  one — unless  Rudyard  Kipling  him- 

[269] 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


self — is  less  tempted  than  I  to  set  Rudyard 
Kipling  up  as  "saint  and  sage,"  or  to  try  to 
establish  a  Kipling  philosophy  or  a  Kipling 
cult.  You  may  take  a  man  seriously  without 
taking  him  religiously,  I  should  hope.  But  the 
intellectuals  take  other  people  religiously,  not 
to  say  seriously;  and  why  Kipling  is  to  be 
forever  relegated  by  our  arbiters  of  taste  to 
the  ranks  of  the  frivolous  or  the  hysterical  or 
the  vulgar,  passes  the  normal  understanding. 

Two  demands  can  respectably  be  made  of 
a  writer,  in  order  that  he  should  be  taken 
"seriously" :  that  he  should  be  to  some  extent 
a  master  of  style,  and  that  he  should  have 
sane  and  serious  things  to  say  about  life.  To 
those  who  insist  that  Kipling  is  not  a  master 
of  English  style,  one  has,  really — now  I  come 
to  think  of  it — nothing  to  say.  Especially  as 
many  of  them  will  tell  you,  with  straight  faces, 
that  Galsworthy,  or  Arnold  Bennett,  or  some 
one  else,  is  a  master  of  style.  Chiefly,  it  means 
that  they  care  so  little  about  what  he  says  that 
they  belittle  his  way  of  saying  it.  They  persist 
in  taking  a  purely  momentary  point  of  view. 
Kipling,  I  fancy,  can  afford  to  await  the  judg 
ment  of  posterity.  He  is  destined  to  become  a 
great  English  name. 

There  are  probably  several  reasons  for  this 
critical  scorn.  One  is  that  he  writes  short 
stones,  and  short  stories  are  not  yet  so  digni 
fied  as  novels — unless  the  writer  be  Mau- 

[270] 


REMARKABLE  RIGHT  NESS  OF  KIPLING 

passant.  Some  of  the  critics  have  never  read 
anything  but  the  earliest  Kipling.  Largely,  it 
is  because  they  have  not  the  faintest  approxi 
mation  to  a  Chaucerian  or  Shakespearean 
sense  of  life — life,  good  and  bad,  high  and 
low,  grave  and  gay — and  they  find  no  charm, 
no  "distinction"  in  the  blessed,  common,  earthy 
Englishness  of  the  English  scene.  Most  of  all, 
they  are  uninterested  in  the  very  universality 
of  the  emotions  and  events  he  deals  with: 
patriotism,  love,  childhood  and  parenthood, 
duty,  and  death.  Nor  have  they  much  taste  for 
laughter.  As  for  tradition,  they  are  so  busy 
scrapping  it,  that  they  are  not  concerned  with 
illustrations  of  its  continuity  and  deathlessness. 

I  could  get  up  a  better  brief  for  Kipling  on 
the  human  score,  if  I  were  not  making  it  a 
point  of  honor  to  stick  to  The  Five  Nations. 
For  Kipling  has  gone  on  very  much,  even  since 
then.  The  Five  Nations  deals  particularly 
with  the  Boer  War  and  reactions  after  the 
Boer  War.  His  more  explicitly  "human"  wis 
dom  is  not  to  be  found  there  in  greatest  meas 
ure.  Yet  in  some  ways  The  Five  Nations 
comes  home  to  us  just  now  more  than  other 
things,  when  we  are  in  the  midst  of  the  very 
war  which  he  therein  prophesied. 

Take  the  "Chant-Pagan."  When  the  war  is 
over,  there  will  be  some  millions  of  English 
men  (to  leave  out  the  other  Allies)  who  will 
come  home  singing  that  chant — if  not  literally, 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


then  in  spirit.  In  fact,  that  is  the  most  encour 
aging  thing  in  all  Kipling  for  the  reformers — 
except  that  I  do  not  believe  the  returned  sol 
dier  will  care  much  more  for  the  English  in 
dustrial  paradise  than  for  the  "Squire  an'  'is 
wife."  Even  old-age  pensions  and  the  abolition 
of  great  estates,  and  all  the  other  articles  of 
Lloyd  George's  faith,  are  not  going  to  make 
him  happy.  He  is  going  to  know  too  much 
about  real  values.  There  is  just  a  chance  that, 
after  having  saved  England  in  the  field,  he 
may  save  England  at  home.  There  will — God 
send ! — be  so  many  of  him.  No  ^man  can 
prophesy;  and  yet  already,  in  America,  one 
hears  people  wondering  about  our  own  boys, 
in  the  very  sense  of  the  "Chant-Pagan." 

Naturally,  as  I  say,  the  more  personal  hu 
man  relations  are  not  dealt  with  in  The  Five 
Nations.  But  there  remains  "The  Second 
Voyage."  I  do  not  know  that  anything  saner 
or  wiser  or  more  poignant  has  ever  been  writ 
ten  about  that  love  between  man  and  woman 
which  is  the  bulwark  of  Occidental  civilization. 
No  one  can  deal  more  tenderly  than  Kipling 
with  the  idyll  between  boy  and  girl — look  at 
"The  Brushwood  Boy."  He  can  even  deal  con 
vincingly  with  the  great  illicit  love  (though  it 
is  not  a  favorite  theme  of  his) — witness 
"Without  Benefit  of  Clergy"  and  the  great 
paragraph  in  "Love  o'  Women."  But  the  love 
that  he  most  often  treats  is  the  love  between 

[272] 


REMARKABLE  RIGHT  NESS  OF  KIPLING 

husband  and  wife:  the  love  that  is  built  on 
shared  tears  and  laughter,  on  deep  domestic 
sympathies  and  clean  sex-attraction,  the  love 
that  many  waters  cannot  quench.  In  "The  Sec 
ond  Voyage'7  he  explicitly  renounces  all  others; 
it  expresses  love,  if  you  like,  more  or  less 
according  to  the  prayer-book.  He  sacrifices  to 
the  god  of  Romantic  Marriage.  If  you  choose 
to  put  it  that  way,  there  ain't  a  lady  livin'  in 
the  land  as  he'd  change  for  'is  dear  old  Dutch. 
Perhaps  that  is  why  they  call  him  vulgar. 
Many  of  our  "serious"  contemporaries  appear 
to  resent  any  account  of  human  relations  that 
is  both  vitally  human  and  essentially  decent, 
because  it  leaves  at  one  side  their  two  pre 
ferred  groups:  the  very  sophisticated,  and  the 
criminal  classes. 

I  suspect  that  one  difficulty,  for  the  more 
sincere,  if  still  brittle,  intellectuals,  lies  in 
the  unconventional  verse-forms  which  Kipling 
often  affects.  They  can  stand  any  amount  of 
slang  in  prose,  but  they  cannot  endure  it  in 
verse.  At  least,  they  do  not  believe  that  "high 
seriousness"  can  wear  such  a  garb.  I  dare  say 
they  would  throw  out  even  "The  Second  Voy 
age"  on  the  score  of  unconventionality.  Well: 
let  them.  I  was  going  to  quote  some  of  it, 
but  I  am  too  out  of  temper  with  the  intellec 
tuals.  They  may  read  it  for  themselves.  And 
probably  none  of  the  moderns  would  be  able 
to  endure  the  mention  of  "Custom,  Reverence, 

[273] 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


and  Fear."  I  give  it  up.  But  they  need  not 
think  that  Kipling's  own  education  in  the  mat 
ter  of  sex-relations  stopped  with  the  Gadsbys. 
To  the  mind  of  the  serious  Kipling-lover, 
the  thing  that  grows  more  and  more  impres 
sive  is  his  universality.  Perhaps  it  seems  to 
some  an  unimportant  list  of  allegiances  that  I 
have  mentioned:  "pious  attachment  to  the  soil; 
romantic  love,  enduring,  clean  outside  and  in; 
the  beauty  of  childhood  and  the  bitterer  beauty 
of  parenthood;  patriotism  unshrinking  and  un 
ashamed;  loathing  of  the  mob  and  the  mob's 
madness  and  meanness;  the  continuity  of 
the  English  political  tradition,  from  Magna 
Charta  down;  religious  toleration;  scrupulous 
perception  of  differences  between  race  and 
race,  type  and  type;  the  White  Man's  Bur 
den."  Many  a  man  has  had  a  tablet  in  West 
minster  Abbey  for  a  lesser  creed.  And  almost 
no  one  has  sought  his  wisdom  and  his  delight 
in  so  many  places  or  so  many  classes  of 
society.  Engineers,  subalterns,  ladies  of  the 
manor,  cockney  privates,  Hindu  bearers,  Boer 
farmers,  half-caste  Portuguese  nursemaids, 
Gloucester  fishermen,  bank  clerks,  reporters, 
young  English  children,  German  scientists, 
law  lords,  public-school  boys,  lamas,  pilots, 
children  of  the  zodiac,  even  the  beast-folk  of 
the  jungle — what  a  Shakespearean  welter,  and, 
humanly  speaking,  what  a  Shakespearean  re 
sult!  It  is  the  "good  gigantic  smile  o'  the 

[274] 


REMARKABLE  RICH  TN ESS  OF  KIPLING 

brown  old  earth."  And  the  far-flung  adventure 
has  brought  Kipling  back  to  a  very  simple  but 
not  too  easy  code.  At  least,  one  cannot  say 
that  he  sticks  by  the  most  English  of  English 
traditions  because  he  has  never  seen  anything 
else.  He  has  had  room  and  chance  to  choose. 
He  has  ended  by  being  very  orthodox,  not  to 
say  conventional,  about  the  fundamental  hu 
man  duties;  and  he  reads  history  with  a  canny 
eye.  But  I  do  not  think  anyone  can  accuse  Kip 
ling  of  being  a  stick-in-the-mud.  "With  the 
Night  Mail"  does  not  look  so  Jules  Verne-ish 
now  as  it  did  when  it  was  printed.  Perhaps 
some  day  we  shall  even  have  to  give  the  bene 
fit  of  the  doubt  to  the  later  "flight  of  fact" 
called  "As  Easy  as  A.  B.  C."  Though  I  admit 
that  that  is  going  far. 

Just  there,  I  did  leave  The  Five  Nations 
for  the  moment;  but  it  is  impossible  to  men 
tion  "As  Easy  as  A.  B.  C."  and  not  also  quote 
some  of  "MacDonough's  Song." 

Whether  the  People  be  led  by  the  Lord, 

Or  lured  by  the  loudest  throat; 
If  it  be  quicker  to  die  by  the  sword 

Or  cheaper  to  die  by  vote — 
These  are  the  things  we  have  dealt  with  once, 

(And  they  will  not  rise  from  their  grave) 
For  Holy  People,  however  it  runs, 

Endeth  in  wholly  Slave. 

Whatsoever,  for  any  cause, 
Seeketh  to  take  or  give 

[275] 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


Power  above  or  beyond  the  Laws, 

Suffer  it  not  to  live ! 
Holy  State  or  Holy  King — 

Or  Holy  People's  Will- 
Have  no  truck  with  the  senseless  thing. 

Order  the  guns  and  kill ! 

Saying — after — me : — 

'Once  there  was  The  People — Terror  gave  it  birth; 
Once  there  was  The  People  and  it  made  a  Hell  of 

Earth. 

Earth  arose  and  crushed  it.     Listen,  O  ye  slain ! 
Once  there  was  The  People — it  shall  never  be  again !' 

Easy  enough  to  see  why  Kipling  is  not  popu 
lar.  Yet  Kipling  is  by  no  means  the  only 
person  who  is  warning  us  that  mob-rule  may 
come  and  sweep  away  our  institutions.  Most 
people  who  fear  that  event  are  doing  their 
best  to  ingratiate  themselves  with  the  mob 
before  it  wholly  loses  its  temper.  I  confess 
that — politics  apart,  and  as  a  mere  matter  of 
dignity — it  is  a  comfort  to  hear  some  man 
speak  in  another  spirit  and  sense  than  that  of 
craven  conciliation.  I  have  not  quoted  from 
"MacDonough's  Song"  because  I  think  it  is 
a  great  poem;  but  because  it  is  perhaps  the 
most  nakedly,  blatantly  "unpopular"  thing  Kip 
ling  has  ever  written.  There  it  is,  openly  ad 
mitted,  in  all  its  offensiveness — his  greatest 
crime.  Damn  him  for  it  if  you  feel  inclined, 
but  confess  that  to  write  as  uncompromisingly 
as  that  is  better  manners  than  to  have  loathing 

[276] 


REMARKABLE  RIGHTNESS  OF  KIPLING 

or  fear  in  your  heart  and  honey  on  your  lips. 
"We  reason  with  them  in  Little  Russia,"  says 
Dragomiroff  in  "As  Easy  as  A.  B.  C."  Well, 
it  looks  as  if,  several  generations  ahead,  that 
might  still  be  the  method  in  Little  Russia.  The 
story  was  written  in  1912. 

The  Five  Nations  ends  with  the  "Re 
cessional,"  which  preceded  the  Boer  War  by 
three  years.  And  there  is  nothing  to  add  to 
the  "Recessional,"  even  now;  except  that  Ger 
many  needs  to  read  it,  at  present,  more  than 
England  does.  All  that  I  have  meant  to  do  is 
to  point  out  that  Kipling  was  right  about  pre 
paredness,  right  about  the  Colonies,  right 
about  Germany,  right  about  Russia,  right 
about  the  Boers,  right  about  Kitchener,  right 
about  demagogues  and  "labor,"  right  about 
the  elderly  politicians,  right  about  the  decent 
British  code,  right  about  patriotism  and  the 
human  heart — right  about  love;  and  that  for 
all  those  things  (except  the  last)  he  was 
slanged  as  if  he  were  wrong.  In  political  mat 
ters,  "thought  is  free,"  with  us,  at  least.  But 
in  the  matter  of  literary  criticism,  it  seems  a 
pity  not  to  realize  the  worth  and  distinction 
of  the  few  people  we  have  who  possess  either. 
I  have  been  told  that  Kipling  still  sells  better 
than  any  other  author  in  America.  When  I 
think  of  Harold  Bell  Wright,  I  hope,  for  the 
credit  of  America,  that  it  is  true.  Perhaps  the 
attitude  of  the  intellectuals  is  mere  snobbish- 

[277] 


MODES  AND  MORALS 


ness,  which  cannot  consent  to  think  a  best 
seller  literature.  But,  as  I  say,  it  is  a  pity  that 
the  greatest  living  master  of  English  style  (for 
Conrad's  is  a  restricted  field)  should  not  be 
confessed  to  as  such  by  the  few  who  still  pro 
fess  to  care  about  style.  One  would  not  mind 
so  much  if  they  did  not  commend  such  a  lot 
of  third-rate  st  °* 

I  am  glad  that  *upling  himself  has  the  vul 
gar  consolation  of  royalties.  He  has,  to  be 
sure — I  repeat — the  disadvantage  of  telling 
the  truth  prematurely.  If  we  have  just  about 
caught  up  with  The  Five  Nations — well,  let 
us  hope  that  the  argument  from  analogy  will 
not  work  in  this  case :  that  we  shall  never  have 
to  catch  up  with  "As  Easy  as  A.  B.  C." ;  that 
that,  at  least,  may  not  be  an  instance  of  his 
remarkable  Tightness.  For  it  does  not  make 
one  happy  about  the  immediate  future. 


[278] 


FOURTEEN  DAY  USE 

RETURN  TO  DESK  FROM  WHICH  BORROWED 


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